This book provides the official history of the Maryland Campaign of 1862 as prepared by the Antietam Battlefield Board. The board was established by the secretary of war to carry out the purpose of an August 1890 Act of Congress which appropriated money for the purpose of surveying, locating, and preserving the lines of battle of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, and acquiring land for marking the position of all commands which fought at Antietam. Congress added the closely related battlefields of South Mountain, Harpers Ferry, and Shepherdstown in subsequent appropriations acts. The inscriptions on the cast iron tablets erected by the board provided an impartial, carefully researched, authenticated account of the campaign which ended with the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. The inscriptions are presented here in five groupings which describe the events prior to the Battle of Antietam, the three phases of the battle and those that describe the Confederates' departure back to Virginia. The inscriptions that describe the three phases of the Battle of Antietam are ordered in the sequence that the battle evolved. An overview of the events which occurred in each of the five phases, along with battle maps and maps showing the location of the tablets, are provided to orient the reader and assist in identifying the location of the events described.

About: George R. Large

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