Battle of Antietam Near Sharpsburg Staff Ride

Nine faculty members and 55 cadets from the Department of History conducted a staff ride to analyze the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The participants not only investigated and scrutinized Union and Confederate tactics and decisions made on the 1862 battlefield, but evaluated the significance of the actions in altering the scope and purpose of the Civil War for the North. Along with stops at places that witnessed catastrophic American casualties such as the Cornfield, the Sunken Road, and Burnside Bridge, cadets and faculty visited Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, home to the infamous nineteenth-century federal arsenal that was captured by the Confederacy in the days leading up to the Battle of Antietam as well as by abolitionist John Brown in 1859.