About Me

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I am a lifelong student of military history with particular interest in the Battle of Antietam. I work for the federal government in Washington DC and have two young adult children who I love very much. I currently volunteer at Antietam and devote much time to the study of this battle and the Maryland Campaign. I enjoy collecting notable contemporary quotations by and about the men of Antietam. Since 2013 I have been conducting in depth research on the regular artillery companies of the Union Army and their leaders. I hope to turn this into a book on this subject in the future. My perspective comes from a 28-year career in the U.S. Army. Travels took me to World War II battlefields in Europe and the Pacific where American valor ended the tyranny of Nazism and Empire. But our country faced its own greatest challenge 80 years earlier during the Civil War. And it was the critical late summer of 1862, when Robert E. Lee launched the Maryland Campaign. It is an incredible story of drama, carnage, bravery, and missed opportunities that culminated around the fields and woodlots of peaceful Sharpsburg MD. So join me as I make this journey South from the North Woods.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

September 7, 1862 Voices




U.S. Ambassador to France William L. Dayton

"Truthfulness is not, as you know, an element in French diplomacy to manners.  No man but a Frenchman would ever have thought of [Charles} Talleyrand's famous bon mot, that the object of language was to conceal thought."
William L. Dayton, September 7 1862.
Dayton, US ambassador to France expressing frustration toward the French at a critical moment in the war when French or British mediation is a possibility.  From Blue and Gray Diplomacy by Howard Jones. Chapel Hill:  The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
page 285






 


Confederate President Jefferson Davis
"That under these circumstances, we are driven to protect our own country by transferring the seat of war to that of an enemy, who pursues us with a relentless and, apparently aimless hostility;"
Jefferson Davis, September 7 1862
Part of a proclamation drafted by President Davis for Lee to use in Marylad
OR 19 (2) page 598
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