Burnside's Bridge: The Climactic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia at Antietam Creek - Hardcover

Tucker, Phillip Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811701999 ISBN 13: 9780811701990

Publisher: Stackpole Books, 2000

Synopsis

5 maps 6 x 9
* First thoroughly researched study of the struggle for Burnside's Bridge
* New perspective on Robert Toombs's role in the Army of Northern Virginia

Before the heroic stand of the 20th Maine at Little Round Top, the 2nd and 20th Georgia Infantries, led by Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs, held off a veritable Yankee juggernaut and triumphed at Burnside's Bridge on Antietam Creek in 1862. This detailed account profiles the troops whose last stand helped prevent the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia, providing Robert E. Lee with yet another chance for a northern invasion.

Phillip Thomas Tucker, chief historian of the 81st Training Wing, Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, is the author/editor of several Civil War titles, including The 1862 Plot to Kidnap Jefferson Davis (0-8117-1271-0).

About this title

About the Author:

Phillip Thomas Tucker is the author or editor of more than 20 books on the Civil War and African American, women's, and Irish history. He is a United States Air Force historian at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC.

Review:

"'The Thermopylae of the Civil War' . . . the single most remembered aspect of that fight [at Antietam], the contest for the bridge, has not until now been the subject of an in-depth book-length study.   Phillip Thomas Tucker remedies that in Burnside's Bridge: The Climactic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia at Antietam Creek.  As Tucker admirably demonstrates, it is not for nothing that those at the time and others since have called that fight the Thermopylae of the Civil War . . . In a work that is thoroughly researched and dramatically written, Tucker lays out the story of a day in which the fate of the Confederacy rested on the breadth of a hair . . . Burnside's Bridge is a fine example of the potential to be found in examining a discrete segment of a major action in order to show how the part influenced the whole.  On few battlefields of the Civil War, or any other conflict, did one such part prove to be so vital to the outcome.  Tucker is admirably nonpartisan, paying equal attention to what happened at both ends of the Rohrbach [Burnside's] bridge, but inevitably the greatest drama, and the greatest glory, rests with those determined Georgians and their politicians-turned-general who very well may have saved Lee's army, and with it the Confederacy to fight another day."
--William C. Davis

"One Wednesday in September 1862 a few hundred Georgians held up an entire Federal corps for more than half a day and changed the course of the battle of Antietam.  Burnside's Bridge details this story, one of the most dramatic of the Civil War."
--Perry D. Jamieson, Ph.D.

""Burnside's Bridge highlights a significant but neglected aspect of Antietam that still ranks as the bloodiest day in American history.  The author's scholarship is sound, his grasp of tactics sure, and his writing vivid, making Burnside's Bridge both a good read and good history."
--Edward G. Longacre, Ph.D.

"Burnside's Bridge over Antietam Creek is perhaps the best-known landmark on a Civil War battlefield [after Gettysburg].  There, on September 17, 1862, two Georgia regiments, taking advantage of terrain superbly suited for defense, frustrated the efforts of General Ambrose E. Burnside's Ninth Corps to cross the Antietam Creek for five hours.  In doing so, they bought precious time for the last Confederate reinforcements to arrive on the battlefield [to avoid] an early death blow to the Confederacy . . . Phillip Thomas Tucker offers a blow-by-blow account of the fight for the lower Antietam . . . Tucker deserves considerable praise for his efforts.  Drawing upon a truly impressive range of primary and secondary sources, he has produced a thorough and highly readable narrative of the battle for Burnside's Bridge that will appeal to anyone with an interest in this aspect of the bloodiest day in American military history."
--Journal of Southern History

About this edition

• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0811701999
• ISBN 13: 9780811701990
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198