Product Description

WINNER OF THE 1999 JEFFERSON DAVIS AWARD

Complementing Confederate Tide Rising, this detailed account focuses on the military campaign itself. Antietam languishes in the long, obscuring shadow cast by Gettysburg and Harsh advocates rethinking the Maryland campaign. He promotes the argument that Antietam was one of the most interesting, critical, and potentially enlightening episodes in U.S. history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #494745 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

Review
This is a tour de force challenging much of the conventional wisdom, both pro- and anti-Lee. Mr. Harsh's signal contribution to understanding this campaign, and by extension to the war as a whole, is to transcend issues of personality--"Robert the Bold vs. George the Timid"--in order to focus on strategic considerations. -- The Washington Times, November 13, 1999

About the Author
Joseph L. Harsh is a professor and former chair of history at George Mason University in Virginia. He is founding president of the Northern Virginia Association of Historians.

Customer Reviews

Harsh Light on Lee
Much praise has been heaped on Dr. Harsh for this defining work on the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Awards have rolled in - perhaps the setup for the Pulitzer Prize for his planned upcoming works on the Union Side of the first two years of the American Civil War in the eastern theatre. Certainly, Harsh's approach of - what did they know, when did they know it, what did they do with information? - represents a step forward in understanding this critical campaign. Perhaps this method is taken a little too far, perhaps the author is too contrarian, eager to dispel existing notions and overturn previous judgements, but that's the fun of it - great academic arguments will result. Harsh's academic method - he is currently Professor of History at George Mason University, a school that he originally lobbied to be called "The University of Northern Virginia" (non-ACW fanatics didn't get it) - is unquestioned. A critical, thorough survey has been conducted of available original source material as well as established secondary sources. All told, it is an amazing story. This work is the result of decades of labor on this subject (Harsh is a native of Hagerstown, MD). One of the great points to be made here is that Lee was human after all, he made some significant mis-judgements. If you didn't know it from other exposures to Dr. Harsh you couldn't deduce from this work that Harsh consider Lee to be one of our countries finest soldiers. Even the best have their bad days - or campaigns, in this case. This is an absolutely first rate work on one of the most important (Harsh obviously believes the most important) campaigns of the ACW. Unfortunately, because of its academic format and size, it will not reach wide audiences. For those willing to make the effort, they will be richly rewarded.

Best study ever of the Sharpsburg Campaign
Other histories of the critical 1862 Sharpsburg campaign pale in comparison to this masterwork. Nobody else's work---nobody---can come close to Harsh's study.

Do not miss this; it is the standard by which all studies of the Sharpsburg campaign must be measured.

Well Done
I agree with much the prior reviewers have said. Although I am not a Civil War buff, I found the book readable. I appreciate his methodology also. Harsh attempts to reconstruct the intelligence available to Lee when he made crucial decisions and to assess his decisions based on the moves he could have made given what he knew and in light of his strategic aims for the campaign. All historians should stick by this method. He also does a very creditable job in his attempt to ascertain what Lee knew. On balance very well researched and well argued. I especially enjoyed the end in which he places his argument within the context of existing historiography on the subject. One criticism I have relates to the maps, which is discussed in the review of one of Dr. Harsh's other books. I bought Landscape Turned Red as the result of reading Taken at the Flood. And the maps are much more helpful in that Sears's book. When you are dealing with a lot of different place names and different corps moving around, it makes the flow a lot easier.

(Disclaimer: I sat in on a few classes of Dr. Harsh's as an undergraduate).