SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A leading Civil War historian will deliver a lecture Tuesday night at the LaBelle Theatre in South Charleston hosted by the Kanawha Valley Civil War Roundtable.
Dr. Thomas Clemens’ expertise is the 1862 Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam. Clemens has done extensive study into the work of Gen. Ezra A. Carman, the campaign’s first historian.
“Anybody who has ever written about Antietam has sooner or later been forced to just put in their footnotes, ‘Carman said this happened in his manuscript,’ my goal is–how did Carman know?”
Clemens’ researched found sources that Carman used that Carman chose not to list including letters from soldiers who fought at Antietam. Clemens said he found Carman’s account to be amazingly accurate and that’s what he’ll discuss Tuesday night.
“I’m not going to focus on the battle itself but how the historians at the battlefield essentially created the battlefield as we see it today. How they did this and who they got their information from,” Clemens said.
Antietam, located near Hagerstown, Md., was the bloodiest one day battle of the Civil War. That massive struggle is why the 1862 battle continues to draw interest today, Clemens said.
“In one 12-hour battle 23,000 Americans killed, wounded, missing, we’ve never had a bloodier day in our history than that,” Clemens said.
The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday. It is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow the program.