For a better future, study the past.
For a better future, study the past.
Dunkerly, Robert M. The Lower Battlefield of Antietam: The Forgotten Front of America’s Bloodiest Day. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing. 2025. Index, bibliography, notes, order of battle, maps, b/w photos. ISBN 9781467159289, $24.99.
Use the Arcadia Publishing link and enter my discount code, REDD24, at checkout and save 15%.
This book is scheduled for release on July 15, 2025.
Thank you to Arcadia Publishing for supplying a complimentary review copy. A regular review will be forthcoming.
While Antietam remains one the most famous engagements of the Civil War, history largely overlooks the lower end of the battlefield.
Only here did the Confederates use Antietam Creek as a barrier, so it was the only place where Union troops had to force their way across. Here the Union army waged its final attack, and the Confederates launched their last counterattack led by A.P. Hill’s division. It might as well have been a different battle entirely from the more famed northern field.
Using dozens of journals, diaries, newspaper accounts and reports, author Robert M. Dunkerly examines the action in detail and explores the gradual preservation of this oft-neglected portion of America’s bloodiest battle.
Robert M. Dunkerly is a historian who is active in historic preservation. He has authored seventeen books about the American Revolution, Civil War and other topics. Dunkerly has served as president of the Richmond Civil War Round Table, taught classes at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and Central Virginia Community College and writes for the Emerging Civil War and Revolutionary War blogs. He has visited more than one thousand battlefields worldwide.
