behind AotW

The beginning of a letter of 5 October 1862 to the editor of the Savannah Republican from Lieutenant Peter A. S. McGlashan of Company E detailing his experience with the 50th Georgia Infantry on South Mountain and at Sharpsburg in September 1862. It was printed in the 16 October edition on page 2, column 2. The complete article is clipped below (touch any section to enlarge).

Here’s McGlashan in about 1864, by then Colonel of the regiment, in a photograph from the Thomasville (GA) History Center.

The photograph and complete newspaper are online thanks to the Digital Library of Georgia.

Kendall’s Mills in Fairfield, Somerset County, Maine (touch to enlarge). Hometown of Lieutenant Augustus F. Emery of Companies E and D of the 7th Maine Infantry, 1861-1864.

Homes of others of the regiment are probably shown on the map. I found at least one: Seldon Connor, at Elm and Newhall Streets, was later Colonel of the Seventh (January 1864) and Governor of Maine (1876-79).

This lovely piece is but a small detail from a very large scale map of Somerset County in 1860 created by engineer J. Chase, Jr and printed by W.H. Rease in Philadelphia, PA, now at the Library of Congress.

I recommend it to my fellow students of the Regiment.

It had been nearly 20 years since I last added a battle map segment to Antietam on the Web, and now I’ve put up two new ones in two days. I felt the call to do the first one as I began a deep dive into the men of the 7th Maine Infantry [previous blog post], and the second follows from some excellent field walks and discussions at the Antietam Institute Fall Conference last October.

That second new map covers a series of disjointed but remarkably effective Confederate counter-attacks near the center of their position at Sharpsburg about noon on 17 September 1862. Most ended quickly in apparently bloody failure, but taken together they were a strategic success: critical to keeping the Federals from advancing much beyond the Bloody Lane that afternoon.

[Battle Map #10 on AotW]

While I was at it, I re-ordered the 15 map sections in approximately chronological rather than simply north-to-south order, and replaced the old top-level “menu” map with this one:

[from the main Battle Map page on AotW]

I hope this sequence encourages viewers to think a little differently about the combat events of 17 September 1862.

So what neglected action or part of the field should I do next?