Strategic Advantage

An important Civil War battle was fought at Antietam in western Maryland on September 17, 1842.  Called the Battle at Sharpsburg for a nearby village by the South and Antietam for a nearby creek by the North, it has the sad distinction of being the bloodiest day in American history. Over 23,000 men died or were wounded here then, which is more than the combined total of the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War. Should the South win their first battle fought in a northern state, England and France were likely to recognize their sovereign status and intervene with the coastal blockage. Should the North win, President Lincoln would have his first victory, a necessary precursor to issuing his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in rebel states and allowing their military service.

The battle was fought in cornfields with surrounding hills and ridges, in forests, a sunken path later called Bloody Trail, and a stone bridge crossing Antietam Creek.  Artillery attacks from the woods across fields disrupted orderly advances, lines of soldiers that were protected by ridges fared better than those in open fields, and the sunken path was at first easily defended but later turned into a death trap. In the end, General Lee lost a quarter of his troops and retreated back across the Potomac River to Virginia. General McClellan claimed victory although Lincoln later relieved him from duty for not pursuing Lee and hopefully ending the war.

Ninety-six monuments have been erected here mostly from 1890 to 1910. They represent Union Infantry from ten states, five are for Confederate states, ten for heroic individuals including Clara Barton, and there are six mortuary cannons for the generals who died on that day or later from their wounds. They are true markers, often with figures looking toward home, commemorating those who died. They contrast sharply with recent memorial design which is so determined to be place-making. Antietam National Battlefield needs no reminder that it became a Place by the events that occurred There.

The outcome of this battle resulted in part by the strategic reading of the landscape. Excessive losses occurred where the terrain offered no protection. Now the surrounding countryside is being altered by crops of suburban housing development laid out in former cornfields in the usual single-family house clusters with no regard to orientation or response to the natural forces of sun, wind and rain. Formerly, farmhouses were located close to the road so that you could get to your livestock even through deep snow, or situated between uninterrupted field and protective forest (a version of the Savannah effect), but these new communities have ignored the lessons of strategic siting. Perhaps the cost of heating and cooling these vinyl boxes will be their first clue, or the effects of a severe storm, but eventually we will have to realize that what we design and build either works with found ecological conditions, or we forfeit strategic advantage and are committed to an extended battle with Mother Nature; one we will eventually lose.