The Civil War battle known as Antietam, fought at Sharpsburg, Maryland, on Sept. 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American military history. Multiple authors and historical organizations have published many accounts of its carnage. An onsite National Park Battlefield commemorates the sacrifices and documents the horrors that soldiers endured, suffered too by native Marylanders. Yet, until recently, those stories have been told from the perspective of the caucasian civilians and military individuals who witnessed or participated at Sharpsburg.
A book by historian Emilie Amt titled “Black Antietam,” published by The History Press (historypress.com), highlights for the first time the roles and first-hand accounts of Sharpsburg’s African Americans before, during, and after the famous battle. This expertly researched and well-written book details “a turning point in African American history” and explains how Black citizens experienced and responded to an epic event that served as a prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation and their eventual freedom.
Emilie Amt has built a well-respected pedigree for historical studies in Western Maryland. She is an emeritus professor of history at Hood College and an award-winning author of African American history. With a doctorate in history from Oxford University, she has published many books and articles on warfare, women’s history and religion. She lives near Antietam National Battlefield and serves on the Friends of Tolson’s Chapel Board of Directors. Amt strives to make local African American history accessible through blogging, historic preservation and genealogy. She was a key advocate for the recent restoration of an African American cemetery in Halfway, Maryland.
Amt’s book focuses not only on the day the Antietam battle took place but also sets the scene for how past African Americans lived in the area leading up to the Civil War, and why that event shaped their lives for years afterward. Black Antietam includes accounts of John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, the Battle of South Mountain, Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and other unique events that paved the pathway toward freedom for Black Americans.
Black Antietam succeeds in telling a vivid story by using recollections of 1862-era African American Sharpsburg residents, both free and enslaved. The book describes their encounters with Northern and Southern troops and the complexities of Black lives in a state that permitted slavery but didn’t join the Confederate cause. Amt explains the local political and societal experiences of the people who survived those turbulent times.
The author’s research brings this chapter of history alive, as Amt gives voice to African American stories that are revealing and often tragic and were overlooked or ignored in past historical accounts. She also dispels myths and misunderstandings from that era, including the fact that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave in Maryland, only those enslaved in states in rebellion against the union. As a result, Marylanders held in bondage lived in a unique state of unfortunate limbo, neither free nor assured future human rights by the document’s noble yet political purpose.
Who were the African Americans who lived in Sharpsburg during the 1860s, and what did their lives entail? Amt introduces some of those people to paint an interesting portrait. These individuals include the Rev. Daniel Ridout, remembered through excerpts of a biography written by his son, Archie, who was a small boy during the battle. Archie remembered a world turned upside down and how he watched military men drill nearby, then yearned to be a Union soldier to defeat the Rebs.
Another man was Hilary Watson, interviewed for a 1915 book, and described by the author as a “white-haired patriarch who lived in a log cabin on a narrow back lane.” Watson was a 30-year-old man when the Civil War erupted. His wife, Christina, also gave her wartime account, “seated in a rocking chair in her tiny sitting-room with a shawl over her turbaned head.”
Amt also found accounts from two African Americans from opposite stations within Sharpsburg’s society. Jerimiah Summers was 15 during the conflict and enslaved on the Henry Piper farm, situated in the center of the battlefield. The other man was Thomas Barnum, a farm owner who was reportedly the wealthiest African American in Washington County at that time.
In 1860, more free people of color lived around Sharpsburg (210), than enslaved people, who numbered 150. Many of the free Black citizens possessed mixed Black and white ancestry, a “result of sexual exploitation by white men who could use enslaved female Black women as they chose.” Some families of color also had Native American ancestry. Amt noted that the African American residents formed a single community in many ways. “When they were divided, it was not by ethnicity, but by whether they were enslaved or free.”
Slave holding in Maryland differed from the large Southern plantations, as the local social and economic climate had a system operating with smaller groups of enslaved people. The largest slaveholder in the Sharpsburg area detained 12 people, and most white slave-holding residents held one person in bondage at their home, business or farm. It wasn’t unusual for free and enslaved people to work together. Some African Americans even shopped at white-owned stores.
Despite living as second-class citizens at best, enslaved and free African Americans worshipped together, and some intermarried. It was socially preferable for an enslaved Black male to marry a free Black female since any offspring would be immune (by law) to bondage. Any child born to an enslaved woman was automatically considered property.
Slavery in Maryland was on the decline as the Civil War approached, yet this did not ease the tension felt by its free or enslaved residents. The book describes how “Slave traders prowled the region, seeking to buy people to sell into the Deep South, which was hungry for slave labor. In the 70 years before the Civil War, approximately 185,000 Marylanders were sold south.”
Author Amt noted that slavery in Maryland was often described as “mild” since local living and working conditions were less horrific than at southern plantations, but the institution was rooted in violence. One former slave from a Sharpsburg farm related, “I have seen men tied up, whipped, shot and starved…The slave never knows when he is to be seized or scourged.” Along with those miseries, slave owners broke up untold numbers of African American families when they sold individuals as property to another master.
As the Civil War approached, noticeable slave resistance appeared in Washington County, but typical escapees were single individuals or small families who fled north to Pennsylvania and points beyond. When white abolitionist John Brown attacked the Harpers Ferry Federal Arsenal in October 1859, only 10 miles south of Sharpsburg, perhaps dozens of enslaved men took part, and “between seven and 17 of the insurgents who died at Harpers Ferry were black men who had not trained with Brown but had, it seems, joined him spontaneously.”
Brown’s raid failed to incite a slave uprising, but it served as a tolling bell for the coming Civil War. Local enslaved people faced a backlash after that daring attack, with many whites suspicious of any activity. Archie Ridout, the young boy who later penned a paternal biography, wrote, “The John Brown insurrection at Harpers Ferry…caused a great deal of excitement in Western Maryland.” For both free and enslaved African Americans, Brown and his followers became martyred heroes.
When the war started, it was clear to all that the local landscape was prime ground for potential conflict. Maryland was a border state, not free of slavery, but not officially part of the Confederate resistance either. The “Old Line State” was caught in between, with divided loyalties among its citizens.
As the war escalated, often the only demarcation separating the hostile blue and gray forces was the nearby Potomac River. For African Americans and all citizens of Sharpsburg, the proximity of these warring parties was frightening. “However hopeful these families were about the outcome of the war, the presence of nervous and inexperienced troops was a new, incalculable factor in their lives,” Amt wrote.
The Battle of South Mountain occurred a few days before Antietam and gave nearby Sharpsburg the first bitter taste of warfare. The Confederates had invaded Maryland in September 1862, and locals reacted fearfully, preparing for the worst. “Across the county, people made last-minute preparations for invasion, fleeing into the woods or hills, hiding livestock and other valuables.”
Most residents had heard about the famous Confederate generals, and now these men appeared in Washington County, carrying oversized reputations and leading thousands of soldiers. The Yankees and Rebels fought the battle of South Mountain on Sept. 14 at three mountain passes.
During a lull in the fight, Rev. Ridout left his family’s hiding place in a cellar and went out for some fresh air. He and his 14-year-old daughter encountered the enemy. “A mounted Confederate cavalryman was just passing, angry and looking for a scapegoat; when he saw the Black man and girl standing in front of him, he lifted his pistol, pointed it directly at Ridout, and pulled the trigger- three times.” His gun failed to fire, and the rebel rode off swearing.
Despite Ridout’s close call, neither he, his family nor the residents of Sharpsburg were prepared for the carnage that occurred three days later, when the Battle of Antietam commenced on Sept. 17, 1862. Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Confederate soldiers camped along Antietam Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River. Opposing the Army of Virginia, Union Gen. George McClellan brought his well-drilled troops to the field. More than 114,000 combined soldiers gathered at Sharpsburg. Nearly 23,000 of them would be recorded as casualties.
Amt foreshadowed the coming of an epic battle in Chapter 4 of her book, which describes in new detail the horrific conflict at the now-famous creek in Sharpsburg. “In many ways, African Americans and white civilians shared the experience of the battle of Antietam. The widespread fear beforehand; the protracted anxiety, with bursts of terror and panic during the fighting; the sheer horror of the scene that faced them immediately afterward- all these were much the same for every Sharpsburg resident who was present.”
Despite those common experiences, both free and enslaved African American residents had fewer options for staying safe during the battle. They faced the scorn of southern troops, who might abduct even free Blacks into slavery, the indifference of white citizens and these Black residents were more likely to be separated from their families during the chaos.
The book reveals many stories from the battle, seen from African American perspectives. Amt’s synopsis of these accounts also summarizes her challenges to identify and decipher information previously hidden or unavailable. “These short anecdotes, indirect accounts and inferences are the only glimpses we have of the battle itself from the perspectives of hundreds of Black witnesses who saw and experienced some part of it. None of them left written accounts, and vanishingly few of them were interviewed about the battle later on.”
After vivid eyewitness accounts that describe many narrow escapes, including “bullets whistling past them; shells bursting nearby; soldiers killed right next to them,” the firing finally stopped.
The book concludes with a revealing account of events after the battle when African American soldiers joined the union cause, and how Black Americans viewed their new lives in a final chapter titled “The Crucible of Freedom.” With an epilogue and appendixes supplementing her chapters, Amt delivers a unique portrait of Antietam, utilizing new actors and untold prior events.
However, for Black Americans, the struggle for freedom was far from over, as author Emilie Amt pointed out. “It would be a long time before even a semblance of normality could return for anyone who lived in Sharpsburg. Though no one knew it yet, the overall impact of Antietam would be the greatest of all for African Americans.”
View All Advertisers
View All Advertisers
See more than 172 years of local history:
Copyright 2025 © Local.News LLC. All rights reserved.
About The Author
More Stories
7 moments of Asian American and Black American solidarity – Caledonian Record
New Poll Shows White Americans Report Far Better Police Experiences Than Minorities — Findings 'Shock No One' – inkl
7 moments of Asian American and Black American solidarity – Iosco County News Herald