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C A R O L R E A R D O N FromAntietamtotheArgonne The MarylandCampaign's Lessons for Future Leaders of the American Expeditionary Force Fifty years after armies in blue and gray clashed outside the small town of Sharpsburg , a survivor claimed that "Antietam was our greatest day of battle, the bloodiest battle for the South and the most glorious for the Union arms in all that wondrous four years' war which gave to the world new examples of patriotism and higher lessons of heroism." A former Union captain wrote this sentence for a book he dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, Gen. George B. McClellan, and the veterans of both armies. He did not intend for his commentary to be construed simply as the musings of an old soldier. He had something important to tell avery specific audience. As he saluted the soldiers ofhis youth, he made it clear that he wrote primarily for the benefit of the next generations of "military students, and teachers of the art of war, here and abroad."' The legacy of Antietam has come down to Americans as the costliest ofmany costly days our soldiers have spent on fields of battle, as the harbinger of emancipation , and in other forms. For military professionals, Antietam has held another , more specific importance because it did indeed offer many useful lessons to that generation of soldiers whom the Union captain hoped to reach. 290 From Antietam to the Argonne It took nearly fifty years for American soldiers to begin using Antietam as a classroom for professional studies. When they finally did so, they displayed a strong conviction that it and other Civil War campaigns had much to teach them. Indeed, by 1913 the senior administrators of the U.S. ArmyWar College had committed the institution's faculty and students to the preparation of an official history ofthe sectional conflict that could be used as a textbook in all the schools that made up the army's officer education system. The administrators set high standards for the work. Not only were students required to read the best published historical literature on the various campaigns, but they also were expected to use the battlefields themselves as a primary research tool.2 In the i88os, the War Department had begun to take measures to preserve many of the greatest battlefields of the Civil War. Senior army leaders planned from the start to use sacred grounds like Antietamnotjust as shrines to American valor and patriotism but also as open-air classrooms for the education of officers in the U.S. Army and the National Guard. In 1908, Capt. MatthewForney Steele, a military instructor who took army students from Fort Leavenworth toMaryland to study Antietam, marveled at how much had changed since he first saw the battlefield in 1893. His earlier visit had been before the War Department made improvements designed to enhance learning: since then the government had "marked all the lines and positions with metal tablets, all inscribed, and with beautiful monuments. One can ride over the field now with no previous knowledge of the battle and by reading the inscriptions cut upon metal tablets, canfollow the operation from beginning to end." Steele especially liked the addition at the end of the Bloody Lane of a high stone observation tower "upon which our whole party could stand and look down upon the field, getting a birds eyeviewof nearly all of it."3 War Department leaders would have been pleased to know of Steele's appreciation . They had lobbied turn-of-the-century congressmen—many of whom had worn blue or grayuniforms in their youth—for funds to build the roads and erect the tower and the tablets to create this outdoor classroom for officers. It was money well spent. By the golden anniversary of America's bloodiest day, small groups of cadets, captains, and colonels from the army—and even a few U.S. Marines—visited Antietam each year to learn what they could about leadership, strategy, tactics, logistics, and more. They still come even today. But what of that first generation who came to learn Antietam's lessons? What could officers soon destined to lead the American Expeditionary Force to France take away from the rolling fields and slow-moving stream outside Sharpsburg, Maryland? Brig. Gen. M. M. Macomb, commandant of the Army War College at the outbreak of World War I, considered the study of past campaigns such as [3.142.174.55] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 13...

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