Hassler, Warren W., Jr., General George B. McClellan, Shield of the Union. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1957.
Interesting interpretation of McClellan’s actions as Federal commander. His difficulties with subordinates, especially Burnside, are used to explain Federal failure to take advantage of opportunities at Antietam.
Henderson, G. F. R., Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War. Longmans, Green and Company, London, 1955 reprint.
This is a modern reprint of Henderson’s classic military biography, first printed in 1898; it is still a standard work on the legendary Jackson.
Longstreet, James, From Manassas to Appomattox. J. B. Lippincott and Company, Philadelphia, 1896.
Written many years after the war, this account by a leading participant emphasizes his own point of view.
APPENDIX The Emancipation Proclamation
On August 22, 1862, just one month before Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote a letter to Horace Greeley, abolitionist editor of the New York Tribune. The letter read in part:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the National authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy Slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free....
For some months before the Battle of Antietam, as his letter to Greeley indicates, Lincoln had been wrestling with the problem of slavery and its connection with the war. He became convinced that a new spiritual and moral force—emancipation of the slaves—must be injected into the Union cause, else the travail of war might dampen the fighting spirit of the North. If this loss of vitality should come to pass, the paramount political objective of restoring the Union might never be attained.