Ezra Carman

The definitive soldier’s-eye view of the Battle of Antietam—the bloodiest day in American history.

A veteran of the Battle of Antietam, Ezra A. Carman served as a colonel of the 13th New Jersey Infantry. After the horrific fighting of September 17, 1862, he recorded in his diary that he was preparing “a good map of the Antietam battle and a full account of the action. ” Unbeknownst to the young officer, the project would become the most significant work of his life.

Appointed as the “Historical Expert” to the Antietam Battlefield Board in 1894, Carman solicited accounts from hundreds of veterans, scoured through thousands of letters and maps, and assimilated the material into the hundreds of cast iron tablets that still mark the field today. Carman also wrote an 1,800-page manuscript on the campaign. Although it remained unpublished for more than a century, many historians and students of the war consider it to be the best overall treatment of the campaign ever written.

Dr. Thomas G. Clemens, recognized internationally as one of the foremost historians of the Maryland Campaign, has spent more than two decades studying Antietam and editing and richly annotating Carman’s exhaustively written manuscript. The result is The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Carman’s magisterial account published for the first time in two volumes. Jammed with firsthand accounts, personal anecdotes, maps, photos, a biographical dictionary, and a database of veterans’ accounts of the fighting, this long-awaited study will be read and appreciated as battle history at its finest.

Savas Beatie

The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Volume I: South Mountain

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