View single post by Hellcat
 Posted: Sun Jun 10th, 2012 02:35 am
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Root Beer Lover

Joined: Tue Nov 15th, 2005
Location: USA
Posts: 965

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CleburneFan wrote:
This book might be tough to find in a standard retail bookstore because Civil War selections are quite limited in such stores and usually deal with the most popular Civil War topics.

Tell me about it. Twenty years ago I could go to the local bookstore (now the only one left in town that isn't a used book store and there's only one of those left) and they had like two and a half bookshelves dedicated to the war. Last time I went four or five years ago it about was like one and a half shelves. Two and a half bookshelves ain't a huge section but at least you could browse through a selection of different authors and topics on the war. The entire history section twenty years ago was probably about an 1/8 of the store, maybe close to a quarter of the store. The store was twice as large four or five years ago but the history section had shrunk to what the ACW section had been twenty years ago.

As for Antietam (Sharpsburg), the big thing would have been to prevent Lee from escaping. Even sending in the V Corps might not have mattered had Lee managed to escape. McClellan would have had to defeat Lee completely, not just a battlefield defeat but the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia with the capture of Lee and his corps commanders. Particulary Jackson. Then attention would have had to be turned to the Western Theater to end the war two years sooner.

But given McClellan being McClellan, Lee might have suffered a complete defeat at Antietam (Sharpsburg), but I expect he probably would have gotten away.

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