Interview: Hartwig, “I Dread the Thought of the Place”

It’s been a long wait for D. Scott Hartwig’s follow up to To Antietam Creek, but so far, I Dread the Thought of the Place, The Battle of Antietam and the End of the Maryland Campaign has made that wait worthwhile. Scott graciously took the time to answer a few questions on the new book. We spoke 11 years ago on the publication of volume one of his Maryland Campaign opus here, so I won’t rehash all of that below. (By the way, you can find a description of the mortal wounding of my great-grandma’s brother James Gates of the 8th Pa Reserves on page 130.)

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BR: Scott, a lot has happened since our 2012 interview on To Antietam Creek. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s been going on with you since then?

SH: Well, 2013 was a big year for me at Gettysburg NMP, since it was the 150th anniversary. That was a huge amount of work but well worth it because everything came off really well. I retired from the NPS in January 2014 and after a few months of doing whatever I felt like, I started work on I Dread the Thought of the Place. It became my new job but I got to set the hours. I typically wrote Mon-Fri in the mornings after returning from my battlefield dog walk. Some days I would work in the afternoon but four hours is about the max you can sit in front of a computer and write and be productive. I am pretty disciplined, particularly when I would be deep into a particular chapter, and I love the process of research and writing.

BR: To Antietam Creek took you twenty years to write. Of course, much of that work carried over to I Dread the Thought of the Place, which took another eleven years. Can you describe any changes in your research process from one volume to the next? How has technology, new documents, or recent scholarship affected it? Feel free to discuss your research and writing process here.

SH: A great deal more material is available today online than when I was writing To Antietam Creek, which was a great help. Also, some major collections, such as the John Gould Antietam Collection, became available on microfilm. A friend of mine got these and loaned them to me. I then took the reels to Gettysburg College which had microfilm readers that allowed me to copy and save each image as a pdf. This was a huge help as Gould’s correspondence with fellow Antietam veterans is probably the single most important collection for the battle around the cornfield and East Woods. Having it in a format that you can organize by regiment/brigade/division/corps made it easy and efficient to make the most effective use of the correspondence. Other online sources that were very helpful were the Carman maps on the Library of Congress webpage, and their Antietam photo collection. Many of these historic images can be downloaded at a very high resolution which reveals details not discernable in the lower res images we typically see in a publication. For an example the September 19 image of Captain Joseph Knap’s Pennsylvania battery near the Smoketown Road (below), shows that the Miller cornfield was not completely trampled as is popularly believed, or were the stalks cut cleanly off as with a knife, as General Joe Hooker famously reported. It also showed the fence line held by Colonel Marcellus Douglass’s Georgia brigade south of Miller’s cornfield. This was significant because, for some reason, Ezra Carman left it off his definitive maps. But we know it was there and Douglass’s men used it for cover.

As for my writing process over time I evolved into creating a research document for each chapter that included every source I had that related to the subject. This made it easier than having books and papers spread all over the place and dozens of documents open on your PC. Everything you needed to write the chapter was in one document. So, for example, the notes document for Chapter 10, one of the Sunken Lane chapters, was 55 pages long. It included biographical info about key leaders, but the heart of the document was all the letters, diaries, journals, regimental histories, official reports, etc., that concerned this part of the battle. I organized it by order of battle and typed in everything from each document that was both pertinent to the subject and that I might quote from. It was a tremendous amount of work but it made the writing of a chapter far more efficient and you were less likely to forget something that was interesting or important. When I finished a chapter, I let it sit for a few days then went through it with a ruthless eye, cutting, slashing, and revising to make it read better. Then I sent the chapter to two friends, both very sharp on Antietam and the war, but the one was highly knowledgeable about Antietam and the other was good with sentence structure and grammar, which is not my strong suit, and they made their suggestions and revisions. Once I had reviewed their comments and made changes, I considered the chapter nearly complete. But before I sent the manuscript off to the publisher, I went through every chapter again to make further revisions. It is a long process but how you produce a book that reads well.

BR: Just to set the scene, where does To Antietam Creek leave off and I Dread the Thought of the Place pick up?

SH: To Antietam Creek ends on the night before the Battle of Antietam and I Dread the Thought of the Place opens on the early morning of September 17. But I pause after some of the first shots are fired to provide background for those readers who did not read To Antietam Creek, on the political/social/military issues that shaped the campaign, led to the battle, and made the battle so significant. This is the work of the preface. The book then makes it way through the entire battle, including some phases that have not been covered in much detail, such as the Regulars action over the Middle Bridge, and the 6th Corps operations. The book then examines September 18, the Confederate retreat to Virginia, and the Battle of Shepherdstown on September 20. A battle and a campaign are more than troops shooting at each other. Battle’s have serious consequences and often political consequences, so the final chapters of the book examine the battle’s aftermath, the medical story as well as the civilian one; there is a chapter on the preliminary emancipation proclamation, and particularly on how the armies and their leaders reacted to it, and finally chapters on how the Army of Northern Virginia recovered from the battle, and the events that led to McClellan’s removal from command in November 1862.

BR: Were there any surprises along the way? Have you had to reevaluate any notions you held in 2012?

SH: I learned something I did not know in every chapter. There were plenty of surprises, or I should say, evidence I discovered through research that challenged some standard narratives that had evolved over the years. For example, I always remembered the NPS wayside back in the 1970s that presented the debacle that befell Sedgwick’s division in the West Woods as an ambush. I even remember the artwork, which showed Sedgwick’s men approaching the woods and Confederates hiding in the trees waiting for them. For some reason that stuck with me and for many years I imagined that the Confederates had seen Sedgwick approaching and organized a defense in the West Woods that took the Federals by surprise and led to his disastrous defeat. Nothing of the sort happened. The Confederate concentration that led to Sedgwick’s defeat was part luck and part good coordination on their part, plus Lee taking risks to move troops from one part of his line to a more threatened part. But the calamitous decision making of Edwin Sumner placed Sedgwick in a very vulnerable position and this had a great deal to do with his defeat. But getting back to this idea of Sedgwick’s attack and defeat as a straightforward event, I imagined when I reached this part of the book that one good chapter would cover it. What I discovered was a far more complex series of events, a sprawling battle involving attack and counterattack, and which took three chapters, two pretty big ones and one smaller one, to tell it adequately.

I should also mention here that although this is a big book it is also a huge story, and although I tell it in some detail, I always had an eye out for making sure it was not too much detail, so that it overwhelmed and bored the reader. Every detail, every story you tell, needs a purpose and must contribute to the narrative.

Another surprise was the story of Captain Hiram Dryer and the U.S. Regulars who crossed Antietam Creek at the Middle Bridge to support the Union horse artillery that had crossed the creek. I devoted a chapter to this story and expected it to be somewhat dull compared to the chapters preceding it on the Cornfield, West Woods, Sunken Lane, etc. It turned out to be one of the most interesting chapters I wrote. Dryer was a remarkable officer and quite skilled at making the most of the strengths of the regulars, which was discipline, proficiency at skirmishing, and marksmanship. What he accomplished with a relatively small number of men, with, for Antietam, extremely low casualties, was extraordinary. Had his commander, General George Sykes, not been so timid and convinced of overwhelming Confederate numbers, and instead reinforced Dryer and encouraged him to push on, they might have cracked Lee’s line in front of Sharpsburg and forced a redeployment of A. P. Hill’s division.

While this does not fall under surprises, one of the most interesting parts of the book I worked on was the section on trauma in the aftermath chapter about the battle’s casualties. Many soldiers wrote about suffering after the battle; severe headaches, depression, etc. I thought it was important to explore the battle’s mental/psychological consequences which we focus on a great deal in modern conflicts but not so much in the Civil War.

BR: The title – can you share the origins of the quote I Dread the Thought of the Place?”

SH: The title is from a letter that Lt. Col. Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin wrote in June 1863 during the Gettysburg Campaign. His regiment had bivouacked for the night near Leesburg, Virginia, on June 18 after a hard day of marching and Dawes got his hands on a newspaper with a headline that read, “Rebels in Pennsylvania – Another battle at Antietam on the tapis.” Dawes wrote his girlfriend, Mary B. Gates, about this and added, “I hope not. I never want to fight there again. The flower of our regiment were slaughtered in that terrible corn-field. I dread the thought of the place.” I thought no contemporary statement better captured how those who were in the thick of the battle remembered Antietam which made it the perfect title.

BR: How has the book been received so far?

SH: So far the reception has been very good.

BR: What’s next for you?

SH: Not another book on this scale! I have several ideas. The one I am leaning towards is an exploration of how many of the historical myths that took hold in the public’s memory of Gettysburg originated, such as the Confederates came looking for shoes on July 1, and what the historical record tells us what happened. It is remarkable how resilient some of these myths are and how fascinating their origins can be.

BR: Sounds interesting. There’s the myth of a certain one-armed general’s torpedo launch I’d like to discuss with you, if you have the time and inclination.

Interview: D. Scott Hartwig, “To Antietam Creek”

I’ve known NPS Historian Scott Hartwig of Gettysburg National Military Park for about a decade, and every time I’ve met up with him over the years I’ve asked him the same question: “How’s the Antietam book coming?” Well, I guess I’ll need to come up with a new greeting, because his massive work To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, has been published by Johns Hopkins. This is the first of two planned volumes, and takes the reader to the eve of the Battle of Antietam. Scott took a little time to answer a few questions about this, probably the most important Civil War book of 2012.

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BR:  While I’m sure many readers know you from visits to Gettysburg or from dozens of PCN Anniversary Battle Walks, can you tell those less familiar a little bit about yourself?

SH: I am a supervisory historian in the division of Interpretation at Gettysburg National Military Park.  What this means is I do public history and manage the park’s day to day interpretive program.   I grew up in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, but had the itch to live out west and went to University of Wyoming.  By pure luck I stumbled onto a Civil War historian teaching there named E. B. Long.  For those today who don’t know him, E. B., or “Pete,” as his friends called him, was the research editor for Bruce Catton’s magnificent three-volume centennial history of the Civil War.  E. B. knew more about the Civil War than anyone I have ever known and could talk about the people who lived the war as if he had known them.  I ended up taking nine credit hours from him on the Civil War and he was a major influence on my decision to seek a career at a Civil War park in the National Park Service.  I have worked 33 years for the NPS, almost all of it at Gettysburg.  I can honestly say that I have never been bored there a single day.  In fact, some days I wish things would be a little more boring.  There is never enough time to get everything done.  I have written a number of essays and articles for magazines and books, and seminar proceedings, and back in the 90’s appeared in a number of History Channel documentaries relating to Gettysburg, some of which still show but only really late at night.

BR: Who or what were your early Civil War influences?

SH: The earliest influence was the Time-Life magazines in the early 1960’s that followed the course of the war and featured original art of battles, which was the sort of thing that excited a 7-year-old.  Next was probably Hugh O’Donnell, my 8th grade history teacher, who encouraged critical thinking not just about the Civil War, but about history in general.  Bruce Catton was also a major influence.  I read everything he wrote.  My parents also always actively encouraged my interest in history.

BR: Why did you decide to study the Maryland Campaign?

SH: I think Catton’s Mr. Lincoln’s Army was the initial catalyst.  His chapter on Antietam was unforgettable.  The other reason was, when I first started contemplating this, the only two books on the Maryland Campaign were Jim Murfin’s Gleam of Bayonets and Francis Palfrey’s The Antietam and Fredericksburg, which had been written in the 1880’s.  I thought the campaign could use a thorough study that employed the wealth of sources that had come to light since Murfin’s book.

BR: Besides the scale (652 pages of text, plus appendices and an online bibliography available here), what does To Antietam Creek contribute to the existing literature?

SH: This volume gives focus to several aspects of the campaign that have only really been brush stroked to this point.  I spend two chapters carefully assessing the two armies so the reader can understand their strengths and weaknesses.  This part of military campaigns is often overlooked, but when we know the character of an army it helps us understand why it performed well, or poorly, or was mediocre.  The bulk of the book examines the Harper’s Ferry operation and battles of South Mountain in detail, but also in the context of the larger campaign.  South Mountain has been studied by others but there is no in-depth study of Harper’s Ferry existing.  So this volume gives needed attention to what precedes Antietam, which was quite significant, since this encompassed the largest surrender of U.S. troops until World War II, and Robert E. Lee’s first defeat as an army commander, at South Mountain.

BR: Your book has been in the works a long time – as long as I’ve known you. Can you describe how long it took, what the stumbling blocks were, and what you discovered along the way?

SH: It took at least twenty years.  A big reason it took so long is working a full-time job and raising three kids is not conducive to writing.  But I was very disciplined and pecked away at it.  There were certainly times that I despaired I would ever finish it, but there was also something about the learning and writing process that I really enjoyed which always pulled me back.  Much as I enjoy writing it does not come easily to me.  There were many nights I would sit staring at the computer screen and never write a word, and more times that I would struggle to find the right words to describe something.  It was like getting stuck in the mud.  You had to keep pushing and eventually you broke free and started moving again.

There were plenty of stumbling blocks along the way.  Many have faded from memory but George McClellan was one.  He was not so much a stumbling block as much as he was a conundrum.  The first chapter of the book is his story from his arrival in Washington after First Bull Run to his return to command after Second Manassas.  I tried to avoid that chapter at first.  Everyone analyzes McClellan.  I thought I could avoid his controversial personality and history and just focus on the campaign but that proved a foolish thought.  You cannot separate the McClellan of the Maryland Campaign from his history before that campaign.  To understand the campaign the reader had to know McClellan’s history.  I also wrestled with how to treat McClellan.  My initial approach was to follow the lead of a host of writers and historians and bash him as a weak and vacillating commander with a monumental ego.  McClellan is easy to bash, but the more I studied him, his campaigns and his relationships with the Lincoln administration, I felt my initial treatment too critical and I re-wrote the chapter, this time taking a more sympathetic perspective.  I let this re-write sit and when I read it again decided that it too failed to achieve a balanced assessment.  I had strayed too far in the other direction.  This lead to more research and a third re-write, which is what ended up in the book.  My final analysis of McClellan is critical but I think it is honest and evaluates him in the context of the circumstances and conditions he faced both politically and on the military front.

When you work on a project of this size and for this long you are constantly encountering things you did not know, or uncovering evidence that challenges convention.  Two examples are the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia.  The legend is that the Army of the Potomac was an immense host that failed to win a decisive victory at Antietam because McClellan was too cautious and inept and the Army of Northern Virginia, vastly outnumbered and reduced by the summer’s fighting to a hard-core of less than 40,000 men, simply outfought them.  I discovered the reality was considerably different.  The Confederates fought well in every engagement in the campaign, but the reason they ended up with an army of 40,000 or less at Antietam was the result of straggling on a scale the army would not experience again until the Appomattox Campaign.  Confederate logistics utterly failed their soldiers, and when combined with the arduous marching required during the campaign, men broke down by the thousands sick or exhausted.   During the Battle of South Mountain some of Longstreet’s brigades lost far more men to straggling on the march from Hagerstown to Boonsboro than they did in the battle.  If you don’t believe the Confederates experienced a crisis in straggling then read Lee’s correspondence immediately after the Maryland Campaign.  As for the Army of the Potomac, it was not as large as is commonly believed, and was beset by numerous organizational and logistical issues the impaired its effectiveness.

BR: Can you describe your research and writing process? What sources did you rely on most?

SH: I typically like to assemble my research for a chapter before I start writing.  The research also guides the story the chapter needs to tell.  But I sometimes was so eager to write – because I really enjoy the process – that I would get started before I finished the research.  I don’t recommend this method as it leads to an excessive amount of re-writing when you discover evidence that contradicts something you have already written.

The U.S. Army Heritage Education Center, Dartmouth College, the National Archives and Library of Congress were four of the most important archives among many I accessed for this project.  USAHEC houses the finest collection of Union related manuscript material in the country and it is an absolutely first class resource to use.  Besides all the official documents, correspondence, regimental books, etc., that the National Archives houses they had an obscure collection called Antietam Studies, which contained dozens of letters from veterans of the battle mainly to Ezra Carman, a veteran of the battle, and its historian in the late 19th Century, documenting in great detail their unit’s part in the battle, and sometimes, in the entire campaign.  The Library of Congress had Ezra Carman’s massive unpublished manuscript of the Maryland Campaign, which is indispensable to any study of the campaign.  Thankfully, Tom Clemens did a masterful job of editing this manuscript and it has been published by Savas Beatie.  Dartmouth College housed the John Gould Collection.  Gould was an officer in the 10th Maine Infantry at Antietam who in the 1890’s initially set out to determine where General Joseph K. Mansfield fell at Antietam, but the project expanded until Gould was receiving correspondence from dozens of Union and Confederate veterans who fought in the cornfield and East Woods.  Although there is a great deal of correspondence from Confederate soldiers in the Antietam Studies and Gould Collection, for wartime manuscript material the Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the largest.

When I started this project the web as we know it did not exist yet, but in the last few years I used it quite a bit.  The best on-line source for the Maryland Campaign is [Brian Downey’s] Antietam on the Web.  It is an excellent resource.

BR: What’s next for you?

SH: Next is volume 2, which will cover the Battle of Antietam, the end of the campaign and the aftermath of Antietam, both in the battlefield area and nationally.  My guess is it will take three years.

We’re all looking forward to that – but good luck with that three year schedule!

Scott Hartwig’s Maryland Campaign Magnum Opus Coming Soon

Last night, Gettysburg NMP Supervisory Historian Scott Hartwig presented a program on The First Day at Gettysburg to the Western Pennsylvania Civil War Roundtable. Before the program (which was of course first-rate) I spoke with Scott, and as usual our conversation turned to the status of his proposed 2 volume work on the Maryland Campaign of 1862, which he’s been working on at least as long as I’ve known him (about 13 years or so, I think). Good news: Johns Hopkins University Press will publish Volume I, To Antietam Creek, in time for the 150th anniversary of the campaign this coming September! At 800 pages it will pack a wallop, and I’m sure will prove to be a must have for students of the campaign. Pre-order it here. In the meantime, check out From the Fields of Gettysburg, hosted by Scott, John Heiser, and the staff at the park.