For some time now, maybe the last year or two, I’ve felt too closely focused on the events of one day, 17th September 1862. Not that there isn’t a lifetime’s work yet to be done, or that I’ve done much more than nibble at it, but obviously the Battle of Antietam didn’t spontaneously erupt out of the ground. It is surrounded on all sides – in time, geography, and event – by an ocean of context.

I’ve not entirely ignored the ocean, but haven’t paid it the attention it probably deserves.

So I’ve jumped out of the comfortable boat (a dingy, in this analogy) into the water. I’m not going too far really, only expanding the scope of my research and the website to include the duration of the Maryland Campaign. The period of roughly 4 through 20 September.

I have some reservations.

I worry that AotW will become wider than deep, a trait that would reduce it’s value. There are plenty of survey and CliffNotes versions of history online already. Collection of information in detail beyond the standard and the obvious is my goal at AotW.

I worry also that by expanding the scope, I’m diluting the effort. There’s so much yet to learn and document about the battle, and only so many hours (years) in which to do it.

I’ll just have to work with this for a while and see how it goes.

McClelln enters Frederick City

My first new project is mapping the motion of the military units on the Campaign. To do this, I’m building a new series of theater-scale maps, one per day. The physical context to Antietam.

As I have been plotting units, though, I’m finding there are far more of them than I’d read of previously, and the neat orders of battle with which I’m familiar are of less and less help. Local militia, orphaned cavalry detachments, signalmen, state troops; not to mention rear-area logistics, supply, and communications points.

New and exciting territory, but I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

3 Responses to “Opening new territory to exploration”

  1. Drew Wagenhoffer says:

    Brian,
    I applaud you for your daily operational map project. Sounds like a wonderful learning tool no matter how much your visitors know or don’t know about the campaign. Unfortunately, even the better modern battle and campaign histories hardly ever do this (frequent and accurate “where is everyone at this moment” checkpoint maps). Burton’s Seven Days book does this to good effect, but only at a divisional level.

    As for “As I have been plotting units, though, I'm finding there are far more of them than I'd read of previously, and the neat orders of battle with which I'm familiar are of less and less help. Local militia, orphaned cavalry detachments, signalmen, state troops; not to mention rear-area logistics, supply, and communications points.”, as a wargame designer, I say welcome to the club!

    Drew

  2. Will Keene says:

    “My first new project is mapping the motion of the military units on the Campaign.”

    Hurrah! Hurrah! I think this sort of thing needs doing more often and I applaud the effort.

    Will

  3. behind AotW » Blog Archive » Problems in Digital History (Intro) says:

    […] I’ll explore each of these stages in further posts here. Just now, though, I should be finishing another map, hacking through the backyard jungle, working out, washing the dog … ______________ […]

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