Contains more than 20 maps, diagrams and illustrations The Battle of Antietam has been called the bloodiest single day in American History. By the end of the evening, 17 September 1862, an estimated 4,000 American soldiers had been killed and over 18,000 wounded in and around the small farming community of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Emory Upton, then a captain with the Union artillery battery, later wrote, "I have heard of 'the dead lying in heaps,' but never saw it till this battle. Whole ranks fell together." The battle had been a day of confusion, tactical blunders, individual heroics, and the effects of just plain luck. It brought to an end a Confederate campaign to "liberate" the border state of Maryland and possibly take the war into Pennsylvania. A little more than one hundred and forty years later, the Antietam battlefield is one of the best-preserved Civil War battlefields in the National Park System. Antietam is ideal for a staff ride, since a continuing goal of the National Park Service is to maintain the site in the condition in which it was on the day of the battle. The purpose of any staff ride is to learn from the past by analyzing the battle through the eyes of the men who were there, both leaders and rank-and-file soldiers. Antietam offers many lessons in command and control, communications, intelligence, weapons technology versus tactics, and the ever-present confusion, or "fog" of battle. We hope that these lessons will allow us to gain insights into decision-making and the human condition during combat.

The Battle of Antietam was a crucial turning point in the American Civil War. This staff ride guide examines the Maryland Campaign and Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. On 17 September 1862, the Army of the Potomac met the Army of Northern Virginia on the rolling farmlands around Sharpsburg, Maryland. While General Lee sought to bring the war to the North and "liberate" Maryland, General McClellan, having gained important intelligence, would endeavor to defeat Lee and reverse the momentum of several Union losses. Ted Ballard has once again crafted a definitive battle guide drawing on the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Though neither the Union nor the Confederate side gained the decisive victory both desired, the battle provides many lessons in command and control, communications, intelligence, technology versus tactics, and the "fog of war."

Discusses how to plan a staff ride of a battlefield, such as a Civil War battlefield, as part of military training. This brochure demonstrates how a staff ride can be made available to military leaders throughout the Army, not just those in the formal education system.

The Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862, and still stands as the bloodiest single day in American military history. Additionally, in its aftermath, President Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation. In this engaging, easy-to-use guide, Carol Reardon and Tom Vossler allow visitors to understand this crucial Civil War battle in fine detail. Abundantly illustrated with maps and historical and modern photographs, A Field Guide to Antietam explores twenty-one sites on and near the battlefield where significant action occurred. Combining crisp narrative and rich historical context, each stop in the book is structured around the following questions: *What happened here? *Who fought here? *Who commanded here? *Who fell here? *Who lived here? *How did participants remember the events? With accessible presentation and fresh interpretations of primary and secondary evidence, this is an absolutely essential guide to Antietam and its lasting legacy.

Contains more than 20 maps, diagrams and illustrations On the night of 20 October 1861, Union Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone put into action a plan to attack what had been reported as a small, unguarded Confederate camp between the Potomac River at Ball's Bluff and Leesburg, Virginia. Later, after Stone learned there was no camp, he allowed the operation to continue, now modified to capture Leesburg itself. But a lack of adequate communication between commanders, problems with logistics, and violations of the principles of war hampered the operation. What originally was to be a small raid instead turned into a military disaster. The action resulted in the death of a popular U.S. senator and long-time friend of President Abraham Lincoln, the arrest and imprisonment of General Stone, and the creation of a congressional oversight committee that would keep senior Union commanders looking over their shoulders for the remainder of the war. For such a small and relatively insignificant military action, Ball's Bluff would cast a long shadow. The purpose of a Ball's Bluff staff ride is to learn from the past by analyzing the battle through the eyes of the men who were there, both leaders and rank-and-file soldiers. The battle contains many lessons in command and control, communications, intelligence, weapons technology versus tactics, and the ever-present confusion, or "fog," of battle. Hopefully, these lessons will allow us to gain insights into decision making and the human condition during combat. Today, the battlefield is enclosed in the 225-acre Ball's Bluff Regional Park, managed by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority. A short trail includes interpretive markers and a small national cemetery containing the remains of fifty-four soldiers.

This guide uses first hand accounts to illustrate how this two day skirmish turned into one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.