When Hell Came to Sharpsburg

Steven Cowie, When Hell Came to Sharpsburg: The Battle of Antietam and Its Impact on the Civilians Who Called It Home (Savas Beatie, 2022).

Here’s a question that I pose to my Civil War students early in the school year: what first comes to mind when we think of Civil War armies in action? They tend to bring up the vast numbers: men in blue and gray sweeping across fields of battle engaged in combat. Of course the bloodshed takes center stage - wrecked bodies and death on a scale that is difficult for students to imagine…try as they might. Many discuss the carnage beyond the physical to the psychological, and bring up what was certainly the long-term effects on those soldiers who managed somehow to survive.

With a little more prodding, most will begin to see beyond the martial clash of arms. What happened to the landscape and the civilian populations, I further ask them, when tens of thousands of men and their horses and mules passed through, camped, and fought at a particular place? Might they have wrecked the landscape and forever altered the lives of the populations they encountered? Naturally this gets the wheels turning.

Once stated, it makes sense to students that farming communities within 100 miles of Richmond or Washington City, for example, would endure havoc caused armies sometimes numbering over 100,000 on multiple occasions. What would happen when these armies turned up? The men and animals would eat everything, burn up anything, drink the wells dry, and relieve themselves. Total war in all its totality, and fighting was only part of it.

Cowie does a most excellent job at getting to the heart of the matter - dealing specifically with the operations in and around Sharpsburg, Maryland in September 1862. What is immediately striking is his detailed account of civilian property damage inflicted by Union and Confederate armies - both as a result of the battle and in the wake fo the fighting. Barns, private residences, and fence rails - all expensive and absolutely necessary for the survival of the farming community fell victim to the armies. What’s more, despite policies limiting the use of civilian property or policies authorizing the purchase of provisions, animals, and other items - both armies indiscriminately procured civilian property for use by the army, often without compensation. Ruined crops and soldiers’ plundering left the residents, in many cases, with absolutely nothing…and winter was on the way.

Cowie illuminates something else that we may not readily consider when thinking about battles…especially the aftermath of the fighting,: what happens to the dead bodies - both human and equine - left behind. Those corpes left exposed or hastily buried and the rapid decomposition caused a great deal of discomfort for the community (imagine the smell of rotting corpses) and could have also contributed to disease. Human and animal excrement seeping into the groundwater and spreading disease further complicated the realities of living in the region for some time.

The most heartbreaking aspect of this story is the many civilians who were unable to fairly petition the United States government for some sort of reparations for the losses sustained as a result of the battle. The complications were many: having to prove loyalty, finding officers to attest to losses, accurately accounting for unrealized yields…multiplied by the fact that the government did not consider losses directly affected by fighting - the trampling of a crop by soldiers in action, for example.

I believe that this book makes a wonderful companion to the growing field of environmental history - further expanding the definition of military history beyond the drums and bugles. Further, the exhaustive research and concise writing style suggests much concerning our understanding of total warfare, or at the very least makes a good argument that this fight touched people in innumerable and long-lasting ways. Grab a copy and let me know what you think.

With compliments,

Keith