Antietam: Le jour le plus sanglant de la guerre de Secession (review)

The Civil War is the most prolifically written about event in American history. Outside of the United States, however, it has not received anywhere near the same volume of scholarly attention. That alone makes Frédéric Naulet's volume devoted to the fall 1862 campaign in Maryland worthy of attention and review. The tendency of French military history has been to see its subject in very broad terms chronologically but also in decidedly Eurocentric perspective. Many trends apparent in the American Civil War ran counter to the prevailing currents of military affairs in nineteenth century Europe and have therefore proven problematic to European authors seeking to construct a coherent narrative.

Naulet's compact volume is one of a series on "the great battles" edited by Philippe Ricalens for Economica. Like James McPherson in Antietam: Crossroads of Freedom, Naulet sees the Antietam campaign as the decisive event in the war, both in political and military terms. He develops his narrative as a traditional contest between the military protagonists, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederates' Army of Northern Virginia, and George B. McClellan, commander of the Union's unlucky Army of the Potomac. While he uses many of the most familiar sources, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Naulet's work for American students of the Civil War will be his extensive use of European-based sources and historians rarely seen in the United States. Colonel J. Scheibert, a Prussian military aide, witnessed the battle in person and wrote a study of the war that appeared in German and French in the late 1860s. Philippe Régis de Trobriand, a colorful French-born soldier became a volunteer major general in the Union Army and wrote a well-known memoir in French, later translated into English as Four Years With the Army of the Potomac. In addition, Naulet also uses Jean-David Avenel's fine recent study of the French intervention in Mexico, La campagne du Mexique (1862–1867): la fin de l'hégémonie européenne en Amérique du Nord (Paris: Economica, 1996), to demonstrate that one of the long-range outcomes of the American Civil War was to put an end to European colonialism in North America.

This is a fine campaign study which American specialists on the subject who can read French will want to consult for its unique sources and perspectives.