Historical Expert of Antietam

“He probably knew more about Antietam than anyone ever had known or will know. He had the advantage over present historians of having fought there himself and of talking with many others who had also participated in the fight. Such opportunities must have offered him insights into the battle which no one else can ever hope to achieve.” –George W. Davis Antietam Battlefield Board President

At Antietam

Around 9:45 am on the morning of September 17th, 1862, Ezra Ayers Carman led his troops from the relative safety of the East Woods into the intense fight taking place along the Hagerstown Turnpike, south of the Cornfield. As colonel of the 13th New Jersey Infantry, it was his responsibility to personally train and lead his troops to success on the battlefield. For Carman, this was an unusually difficult task as the men of the 13th New Jersey who had been in the army less than a month were about enter into the bloodiest single day battle in American history.

From their reserve position in the East Woods, Carman and the 13th New Jersey were called into action to support Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s division near the Dunker Church. Supported by the 2nd Massachusetts on their left, the 13th New Jersey loaded their muskets for the first time as they moved out of the East Woods and across the Cornfield stepping over the dead and dying left behind after several hours of intense fighting. Pressing on in spite of the horrors they were witnessing, the regiment arrived at the Hagerstown Turnpike unaware of the North Carolinians of Brig. Gen. Robert Ransom’s brigade who waited for them hidden behind a rock ledge. As the 13th New Jersey began to cross the fence bordering the Hagerstown Turnpike, the North Carolinians unleashed a devastating hail of musket fire. Private Joseph E. Cromwell described this moment saying “Suddenly something occurred that seemed almost supernatural. A vast number of the enemy appeared to rise straight out of the solid earth, and they poured into us a deadly volley of leaden hail.”

Though this volley, which wounded 60 and killed nine, temporarily stunned the regiment, Carman quickly rallied the troops who returned fire. However, Carman soon realized that it was impossible for the 13th New Jersey to hold their grounds as “the men were being shot by a foe they could not see, so perfectly did the ledge protect them; they scarcely knew how to load their muskets and were doing little or no execution.” For Carman, “to hold them longer under fire would be murder,” so he pulled the 13th New Jersey back to East Woods once more.

This was only a short respite for Carman as the regiment was soon called again into action, this time to support Brig. Gen. George Greene’s division in and around the West Woods. The 13th New Jersey moved forward again from the East Woods and positioned themselves behind the Dunker Church to the right of Greene’s troops. Confusion and disagreement over the identity of troops moving on their right led to the 13th New Jersey being hit on both their front and flank by the same brigade of North Carolinians whom they had engaged with earlier in the day. Receiving devastating fire from two sides, the 13th New Jersey fell back to the rear. It was during this final exchange that Carman temporarily retired from the field after he was thrown from his horse. After the war, Carman described the scenes of fighting he participated in at Antietam as “a carnival of death of suffering.” This terrifying experience stayed with Carman and eventually became the focus of his life’s work.

 

Valedictorian and Math Professor

Born on February 27, 1834, near Oak Tree, New Jersey, Carman could not have imagined the horrors that would take place on the fields surrounding Sharpsburg, Maryland in September of 1862, nor could he imagine the role he would have in preserving the memory of what happened there. However, as the grandson of a Revolutionary War militiaman, Carman was likely interested in military history from a young age. An intelligent and studious child, he was already working as a clerk at Rahway Post Office by age 15. Possibly inspired by his grandfather, he enrolled in the Western Military Institute in Kentucky where he graduated as valedictorian in 1855. Following the school when it moved to Nashville and became the University of Nashville, Carman taught mathematics there and earned a master's degree in 1858. While at the university, Carman met and married Louisa Salmon. Louisa gave birth to a son, John, in August of 1857, but tragically died one week later.

After receiving his master’s degree, Carman returned with his infant son to New Jersey where he found work as a bookkeeper at T.A. Howell’s Leather Manufactory. His home life was a mix of tragedy and joy. While back in New Jersey, Carman explored his lifelong interest in history by helping the New Jersey Historical Society in his free time. He married for a second time in November of 1859 to his first wife’s sister, Ada but his son died of scarlet fever within the first few months of their marriage. His second wife gave birth to another son, Louis the following year. Over the course of their marriage, Ada gave birth to three more children: Ada in 1863, Francis in 1868, and John in 1870.

 

From Civilian to Colonel to Breveted Brigadier General

An ardent Republican, Carman welcomed the news of Abraham Lincoln’s election as president in November of 1860. However, the news was soon followed by the secession of several southern states and later the opening of the Civil War in April of 1861. Because of his military training, New Jersey Governor Charles S. Olden offered Carman the position of captain in the newly formed 2nd New Jersey Infantry. However, a severe illness and the recent birth of his first son with Ada led Carman to turn down the position. However, Carman did not lose interest in serving his country.

In July of 1861, Carman, whose was visiting the 2nd New Jersey, followed the troops onto the Bull Run battlefield and advised the commander of the regiment during the battle. This experience prompted Carman to seek another army command, and, by September, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 7th New Jersey Infantry. He served with the regiment through Peninsula Campaign where he was severely wounded in the right arm at the battle of Williamsburg. In July of 1862, Carman accepted the position as colonel of the 13th New Jersey Infantry and returned to New Jersey to help recruit and train the newly enlisted troops. It was this newly formed regiment that Carman led into battle on that faithful day in September of 1862.

He served with the 13th New Jersey through the summer of 1864. He participated in many engagements including the battle of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, New Hope and Reseca in the Western Theater. As part of the Atlanta Campaign, he lost hearing entirely in one ear and partially in the other during the fight at Kennesaw Mountain. He was promoted to brigade commander in September of 1864 and later to a division commander. At the close of the war, he participated in Grand Review of the Army as commander of the 1st Division of the 12th Corps and mustered out with the 13th New Jersey on June 8, 1865. For his war service, Carman received a promotion to Brevet Brigadier General effective March 3, 1865. Though Carman participated in many battles throughout the war, it was Antietam that stayed with him throughout his life.

 

The Quest to Remember

With the conclusion of the war, Carman returned to civilian life. He found work in the lumber business and later as Comptroller of Jersey City, New Jersey. Though he was home back in New Jersey, the battlefields of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland remained ever present in Carman’s mind. And the battlefield that held the most interest for Carman was Antietam.

Capitalizing on his lifelong interest in history, Carman spent the decades following his war service working to record the history of the Civil War. He researched various campaigns and battles, but above all else Antietam captivated Carman. It became his lifelong goal to understand and record for posterity what happened on the fields of Sharpsburg in September of 1862. This desire emerged immediately after the guns ceased firing. In the days after the battle, Carman visited and spoke with other Federal veterans, wounded Confederates, and the citizens of Sharpsburg to learn about their battle experiences.

By December, Carman had written in his diary that he intended on “busying myself in completing a good map of the Antietam battle and a full account of the action.” Though the resumption of fighting in the spring of 1863 pulled him away from this task, Antietam never truly left Carman’s mind.

 

Honoring the Fallen

The opportunity to help preserve the memory of Antietam and those who fought there emerged for Carman with the creation of Antietam National Cemetery. In March of 1864, the Maryland General Assembly set aside $5,000 dollars to create a cemetery for the dead of Antietam. However, it quickly became apparent that this money would not be sufficient to meet the total cost of the cemetery so, the state of Maryland enlisted the help of other northern states.

Eventually, 18 northern states contributed funds and selected representatives to serve on the cemetery’s board of trustees to oversee the design and construction process. One of these trustees was Ezra Carman appointed by the Governor of New Jersey on April 23, 1866, Carman served as the state representative and later an executive on the cemetery board for over 10 years. In this role, Carman was instrumental in designing the cemetery as a place to remember and honor fallen federal soldiers including the exclusion of Confederate dead and the placement of a 40-foot-tall Federal soldier monument at its centerpiece.

 

A Life’s Work

It was not until 30 years after the battle that Ezra Carman would be able to fulfill his wish of writing a history of Antietam. In 1890, Congressman Louis McComas introduced a bill to create a federal battlefield park at Antietam. This bill, which was signed into law on August 30, 1890, set aside “15,000 dollars to survey, locate, and preserve the lines of battle at Antietam.”

A two-person board was chosen to oversee the process. Despite Carman’s ardent petitioning for a position on this board, he was overlooked due to partisan politics. This board made little progress due to the advanced age of its members and a lack of funds which lead to its disbandment and the formation of a new board in 1894.

This time, the now 60-year-old Carman was finally appointed “historical expert” of a new Battlefield Board. Carman was joined by Major George B. Davis, who became president of the board and the Federal representative, and Major General Henry Heth, the Confederate representative. With the establishment of a new board, Davis implemented a plan to buy 10 acres of land for the placement of informative markers and an interconnected road system designed to give visitors access to the major points of fighting.

This was a departure from previous parks like Gettysburg and Chickamauga that acquired thousands of acres of land to preserve the battlefields in their entirety. Instead, Davis’s plan involved only buying enough land to place 200 cast iron tablets to explain the tactical maneuvers of battle. Within five days of his appointment, Carman arrived in Sharpsburg and got to work on researching and writing the text for the informative tablets. However, Carman soon found he lacked the necessary information. So, he and the other members of the board began to reach out to veterans and ask for help.

The Board placed advertisements in major newspapers asking for information. Veterans responded in large numbers and Carman exchanged correspondence with hundreds of soldiers. He sent them maps on which to mark the locations where they had fought, and some veterans even returned to the battlefield and led Carman to these sites. From these correspondences, by August of 1895, Carman and Davis were able to place 200 tablets on the field, most of which still stand today.

 

With the completion of the tablets in 1895, the War Department relieved Heth and Carman of their duty and reassigned George B. Davis to active duty in the Spanish American War. George W. Davis, a veteran of the 11th Connecticut Infantry replaced him and had Heth and Carman reinstated. He called for a new map to replace the old, inaccurate map that the Board had been forced to use. The chief engineer of the Gettysburg battlefield Emmor Cope completed the topographical elements of the map and then turned it over to Ezra Carman. Davis tasked him with marking the positions of troop movements on the maps. In this work, Carman truly earned the title of “historical expert.”

Though the board formally disbanded in 1898, Carman continued to work on the maps for the next 10 years of his life. Working on his own time, he created and reworked a series of 14 highly detailed maps of troop movements from the beginning to the end of the twelve-hour battle. The War Department published these maps, called the Atlas of the Battlefield of Antietam, in 1904 and again as a revised version in 1908. Along with the maps, Carman completed a nearly thousand-page manuscript describing the battle in detail. Though the manuscript was never published, his battle narrative, along with the maps, are the centerpiece of the preservation work done by the Battlefield Board and are still an indispensable resource today.

 

Though Carman’s official position at Antietam ended in 1898 and he later became president of the battlefield commission at Chickamauga-Chattanooga, Carman continued to work on preserving the history of Antietam on his own time. Along with editing and revising his maps and manuscript, Carman assisted veterans' organizations and state commissions in designing and placing monuments to honor their fallen comrades. He even left unfinished correspondence about Antietam on his desk when he died on December 25, 1909.

At the 1902 dedication of the 34th New York Infantry Regiment’s monument, Carman himself best summarized the importance of the battle of Antietam and why preserving its history became his life’s work: "Here was made history, here was rolled back the first Confederate invasion of the North; on this field was arrested the recognition of the Southern Confederacy and foreign intervention; on this field died human slavery.”