Product Description

The death count from the Battle of Antietam was the largest of any single battle in American history. Landscape Turned Red, winner of the Fletcher Platt Award for best non-fiction book about the American Civil War, is the definitive work on this bitter battle. Sears bases his account on diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate a vivid drama.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140326 in Books
• Published on: 1993-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Review
In September 1862 - after a year and a half of war - Richmond was safe, Washington was threatened, Lee was advancing through Maryland. But McClellan, as usual, was dithering - when there was delivered to him the celebrated Lost Order (found, propitiously, in a meadow) spelling out current Rebel plans in detail and in toto. Still, he temporized: as author Sears remarks laconically, "a messiah could not afford to be a gambler"; furthermore, a northern Democrat, like McClellan, might also have different priorities than a Republican administration, pressured by radical abolitionists. And such shrewd insights abound here - as Sears, from his long experience as an American Heritage editor, puts the Union victory at Antietam Creek, on September 17, 1862, at the center of the Civil War (politically as well as militarily) and also expands his chronicle internally, through character-portrayal, quotation, documentation. (Some of the source materials that Sears describes have not been used before.) As McClellan prepares cautiously to engage Lee, the British, averse to backing a loser, are waiting to see which way the war will go, while in Lincoln's desk "is the paper declaring emancipation for the slaves, still requiring a victory in battle to work its revolutionary effect. . . ." At Antietam, McClellan's army will win despite him - and with that double lesson, Lincoln can safely let him go. The scenes of battle are clearly and effectively rendered, to the accompaniment of numerous maps and much eye-witness testimony; but the book's climax comes rather in the aftermath - in the decisive yet not disrespectful manner of McClellan's dismissal. Though qualities of Lee are also thrown into relief, nothing registers so forcibly throughout as Lincoln's deliberateness. For Civil War buffs, there is considerable development of incidents (including, in appendices, the Lost Order and the matter of Burnside "carrying the bridge"); for the historically interested reader, there is a graphic, resonant narrative. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
STEPHEN W. SEARS is the author of many award-winning books on the Civil War, including Gettysburg and Landscape Turned Red. The New York Times Book Review has called him "arguably the preeminent living historian of the war's eastern theater." He is a former editor for American Heritage.

Customer Reviews

Inside America's Deadliest Day
If the Declaration of Independence gave the United States its faith and the Constitution its creed, the Emancipation Proclamation was what saved its soul. For that to happen, the United States first had to endure a battle of unprecedented carnage, one which set a single-day record for American war casualties still unequaled. That is the story Stephen W. Sears' "Landscape Turned Red" tells so well.

Sharpsburg, Maryland was a town of limited significance but great strategic value for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, being as it was a crossroads junction that connected his Southern base with a clear shot at the northern heartland of Pennsylvania. Defensible by means of the contiguous Antietam Creek that gave the battle its Union name, not to mention considerable artillery, Sharpsburg nevertheless should not have been as difficult a battle as it was, especially when the Confederate battle plans were discovered and passed along to the Northern high command. Yet something intervened.

As Sears tells it, the main reason was the Union commander, George McClellan, a.k.a. "Little Mac," a great instiller of esprit de corps but a terrible field general, afflicted with what his mordant boss, Abraham Lincoln, called "a case of the slows."

Sears notes some reasons for that, including McClellan's fear of losing troops, his lack of initiative, and a wild overestimate of Confederate strength. But Sears notes something else dragged his hand, a lack of sympathy with the Union cause, at least as personified by Lincoln.

"It should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any state," McClellan wrote to Lincoln in a document that Sears notes could well have been the basis for his later bid for the presidency against Lincoln in 1864. "Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment."

The last part is most jarring to modern readers, but the sum total amounted to a declaration of cross purposes between President and his top general that mirrored the divide across the North, a divide that could only be drowned with blood. Hence Antietam.

However bad it was for his troops, it was lucky for the nation McClellan was such a poor general. A better one might have pulled the army from Lincoln's hands and allowed the national sin of slavery to continue indefinitely.

Sears presses the point of McClellan's incompetence quite a bit, noting how he released Union troops into battle in unsupported sections rather than a wholesale attack. At Sharpsburg, Robert E. Lee might as well been Bruce Lee for the way he was allowed to handle waves of attackers one at a time. He also writes blisteringly of the carnage both sides experienced, to the point where a Pennsylvanian writing home tells of "a Reckless don't care disposition" that came over him so that when two comrades were struck down near him "even their shrieks and yells did not affect me in the least."

However insane it seemed at the moment, and wasteful in immediate retrospect, the bloodiness of Sharpsburg had a purpose, one Sears enumerates in a lengthy epilogue devoted to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and that document's chilling effect on European notions of intervening on the Confederate side. In a phrase, the battle's bloody purchase was the nation's very soul.

Reading "Landscape Turned Red" is to feel anew a sense of pride in being American, but like a similarly inspiring book, David Hackett Fischer's "Washington's Crossing," it is also a work of great excitement, character, drama, and even moments of alleviating humor. Whether or not you believe America is a shining city on a hill, an example for the world to follow, "Landscape Turned Red" is a book you will be glad you read.

Far-Ranging, yet Coherent
Landscape Turned Red is a monumental effort to provide a blow-by-blow description of the bloodiest day in American history. The Battle of Antietam was pivotal to the outcome of the Civil War, even though it would still rage on for another two and a half years. Sears ably describes why Antietam was important to the Union Victory, but more importantly he is able to illustrate the key events of the battle without losing the casual reader of Civil War history. Sears has a clear, lucid style that draws the reader into not only the large-scale details of the battle, but that also provides insights into the mindsets of the major combat commanders. By doing so, this book provides one of the best comparison/contrast studies of Lee and McClellan that I have ever read. Sears doesn't push his opinion on the reader, but rather provides meticulously researched quotes, journal entries and events that make the case for him. Highly recommended.

The Most Thorough Vivisection of a Human Being I've Read
As a description of the battle of Antietam, it's hard to see how this book could ever be bettered, but its true impact lies in the author's thorough, relentless vivisection of George McClellan. We all know that McClellan was an idiot, a coward, and a weasel, but this book reveals the true depths of his idiocy, cowardice, and duplicity. This book represents the most thorough vivisection of a human being that I've ever seen. But McClellan deserved it, so no one will object.