This is the second part in a series on the recent Central Virginia Battlefield Trust spring seminar: The Road to Fredericksburg.
The “Maryland Campaign” has gone down in Civil War history as a series of events during the late summer of 1862 that culminated in the sanguinary Battle of Antietam…the bloodiest day in American history…on September 17th. 
Retired National Park Service historian Dennis Frye, however, enjoins us to “(s)top calling it the “Maryland Campaign!”
Frye’s rationale has merit. Although Robert E. Lee would write to Jefferson Davis on September 3rd and note the time was “propitious” to move north into Maryland, the next day he would tell Davis, “I propose to enter Pennsylvania.” Lee was not asking permission or opening a discussion with his boss on the subject; rather, he was stating plainly what he intended to do. That did not include seeking battle in the Old Line State which, in Lee’s eyes, was simply an avenue to take him across the Mason-Dixon Line.
While taking the war out of Virginia had sound military benefits, Lee was focused on a more “existential” threat to the Confederacy. During the hiatus between the Seven Days’ and the Second Manassas campaigns, the federal Congress had passed the Second Confiscation Act. This was, in essence, a declaration of total war on the South (even before that term would gain traction with the advent of Grant and Sherman two years later). The Act intended to suppress insurrection, punish treason and seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and “property” extended to slaves.
With that knowledge in mind, General Lee had no designs on a “raid” north of the Potomac River. He knew he was fighting for the existence of the would-be Confederate nation. He also knew that military action alone was unlikely to win independence, and Lee had a keen sense of both foreign affairs and political realities.
1862 was an off-year federal election. The Republican party would be entering its first re-election campaign after having achieved initial success two years earlier. The Democratic party was virtually united in the North in its desire to see the war end; if it gained control of the House of Representatives, it could end the war. Although Lincoln would still be president, the House controls the federal purse strings: cut off the money, and the war must necessarily come to an end.
Lee would “announce” his plans in grand…perhaps even arrogant…style. The Army of Northern Virginia would not try to slip unannounced into Maryland. Quite the opposite: Lee would cross the Potomac in full view of the signal station on Sugar Loaf Mountain, a signal station with a direct line of communications to Washington, D.C. Lee was essentially daring the federals to come and stop him.
Although the veterans in gray who splashed ashore in Maryland had been undefeated that summer, they were also not unlike a sports team at the end of a season. There were holes in the line, there were those who were “out for the season,” and many were on the injured reserve list. According to Frye, the Second Virginia infantry had lost its colonel, lieutenant colonel, major and four of its six company officers; in fact, with no field officers present the regiment was under the command of a captain! The Second Virginia was typical of many ANV units.
Lee also realized his move toward Pennsylvania placed him between two federal armies. The largest, again under the command of George McClellan, was in and around Washington trying to get itself together following its defeats during the Second Manassas Campaign. Having previously taken his measure of McClellan, Lee believed he would have considerable freedom of movement before the Army of the Potomac would again confront him.
He was troubled, though, by a smaller corps-sized force of about 14,000 men in an around Harper’s Ferry. Although not a direct threat to his army, this force sat astride his intended supply line that was running through Winchester. Military convention suggested, however, that with Lee passing through Maryland the Harper’s Ferry force would need to be withdrawn for its own safety.
Unfortunately for Lee, Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck had other ideas. Although Halleck had a reputation as a military “thinker”…his nickname was “Old Brains…his later services make it difficult to determine whether it was a stroke of brilliance or a colossal blunder to unequivocally order the Harper’s Ferry garrison to stay put. In fact, Halleck made it clear that anyone abandoning his post or suggesting surrender should be immediately shot.
This unexpected development upset Lee’s planning, but he quickly developed a solution that would be articulated in the famed “Special Orders 191.” He would essentially dispatch two-thirds of his army under “Stonewall” Jackson to surround and force the surrender of Harper’s Ferry. The timetable called for this to be accomplished by September 12th, after which Jackson would join Lee and the rest of the army in Hagerstown…a scant five miles from the Pennsylvania border…to continue the invasion.
Here is where the grand scheme began to fall apart. Contrary to all military logic, the Yankees at Harper’s Ferry neither ran nor surrendered! It would take Jackson three additional, critical days to take the prize, and by that time circumstances had begun to turn against Lee and his troops.
George McClellan would wind up with an authentic copy of Special Orders 191 on September 13th. Had Jackson been on schedule, this would have been old news. The delay, however, caused McClellan to move more aggressively, and he would force his way across South Mountain the next day. That night, Lee would announce “the day has gone against us,” and he would begin planning for the army to return to Virginia.
Sometime that night, a courier from Jackson informed Lee that Harper’s Ferry was expected to surrender sometime on the 15th. Lee reversed himself, and ordered the army to rendezvous in the Sharpsburg area to continue the trek into the Keystone State. In fact, from Lee’s Sharpsburg headquarters, an observer can see the hills of Pennsylvania only 15 miles distant, less than a day’s march away.
McClellan would continue to push toward the Army of Northern Virginia, and Joseph Hooker’s First Corps would block the direct route from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown (and Pennsylvania). The rest is history: the Battle of Antietam, the end of the invasion and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Lee’s grand strategic design was upended by the unanticipated failure to evacuate and the unexpected tenacious defense of what can be termed his Achilles Heel: Harper’s Ferry.
The wailing and gnashing of teeth of the Northern public and press during the first two weeks of September would be completely reversed during the last two weeks. South Mountain, Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation changed the calculus of both war and politics in the space of a mere eight days.
Off-year elections usually favor the party currently out of power, and Lincoln and the Republicans would lose 27 congressional seats to the Democrats. The election, though, was closer than it may have seemed since flipping only another half-dozen swing districts would have given the Democrats a majority. Many of those districts were decided by only a handful of votes, and there is every reason to believe the post-Antietam euphoria was just enough to tally those votes in the GOP column.
The Second Confiscation Act that was an existential threat to Confederate existence gave Abraham Lincoln the legislative backing he needed to issue an “executive order” of emancipation, and the failure of Lee’s proposition to “enter Pennsylvania” assuaged Northern fears enough to ensure the Republicans would continue to direct war policy. In the words of Dennis Frye, this was an “unmitigated disaster for the South,” and would point the armies toward their next rendezvous three months later on the banks of the Rappahannock River: Fredericksburg.
March 31st: “The ‘Moral Spectacle’ of Freedom: the Union Army and the Slow End of Slavery in Central Virginia, 1862.”
