OpenHistoricalMap/Projects/American Civil War/Maryland Campaign of 1862
The campaign started when Lee's forces crossed the Potomac River into Maryland after Second Manassas, on September 4th 1862, and ended when his forces retreated back into Virginia near Shapardstown after the Battle of Antietam, on September 19th. Antietam was the bloodiest single day of the American Civil War.
Current Work
North end of Antietam battlefield on OpenHistoricalMap, showing map feature overlay including temporary burials and initial troop positions for some regiments in Hooker's Corps. The way for the initial position of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment is highlighted in red and displayed in the inspector panel. North end on OHM
Temporary Burials
Temporary burials done after the battle are being entered from the Eliot Burrial Map: [1] These burial locations are being labeled using standard OSM tagging with start_date set to the day after the battle (when burials begain) and end_date values based on when the dead were reinterred at their permanent burial sites elsewhere in Maryland.
Troop positions
Initial Troop Positions are being entered using an experimental event tagging regime. Troop positions are based on the 1908 Cope Maps.
The tagging system is experimental and not supported by the renderer on [www.openhistoricalmap.org OpenHistoricalMap]. Support by the OHM renderer is not expected at any time in the near future, and possibly not at all.
Visualization
Visualizing troop position data is being considered. A probable first cut will use Leaflet or some other embeddable JS widget and overlay troop positions based on Overpass queries.
Completed Work
The road and path network, major water features and farmland use have been entered using the first of the 1908 Cope Maps.
Area around Sharpsburg, MD & Antietam Battlefield
Sources
The Cope Maps
Lt. Col. E. B. Cope surveyed the Antietam battlefield under the general direction of Ezra Carman of the Antietam Battlefield Board and produced a stunning series of maps showing the position of the forces at various points during the day, along with topographic information. The maps also show details such aswhat crops were planted in 1862. There are two editions of the map set, one from 1904 and a second, revised and improved, in 1908. The 1908 series are available as high resolution TIFF files from the Library of Congress. The first map in the series has been aligned in mapwarper.net for use in building the base map.
Eliot Burial Map
Eliot's Gettysburg burial map is well known. Eliot, though, also did a burial map for Antietam. This map was misplaced in the NYPL collection until 2020, when it was discovered by a team of researchers. The map shows the areas where Federal and Confederate dead, as well as horses, were buried temporarily until permanent disposition was made post war.
Carman Manuscript
Ezra Carman, who served as a Federal officer throughout the Civil War and commanded a unit at Antietam, would after the war become the most notable member of the Antietam Battlefield Board. He was comissioned to write a pamphlet, which ultimately evolved into a manuscript of considerable length. Completed around 1909, the manuscript would not be published until 2008, but was regularly mined by historians researching the battle.
For this work, the edition being used is the one edited by Tom Clemens, published in 3 volumes by Savas-Beatie.
License
All map sources used to date are public domain, and the map geometry and names are all licensed CC0.
Contact
The primary mapper for this project is Richard Welty/nfgusedautoparts