TO MAKE MEN FREE

A capable imagining of American history’s bloodiest battle, punctuated by whizzing Minié balls, howling legions, and gloomy pronouncements by Lincoln and Lee.

Documentary filmmaker Croker—a son of the South, where traditionalists still call the horrible fight at Antietam Creek, Maryland, the Battle of Sharpsburg—strikes a fine balance between genre conventions (“he moved inexorably against the badly outnumbered but greatly determined Rebs”) and modern touches meant to humanize players since engraved and enshrined (George McClellan suffers from neuralgia, Clara Barton braves riding on a man’s saddle). Occasionally he channels a little overwritten period prose: “His face, already red from Virginia’s summer sun, now glowed with blood as he finally surrendered to his rage.” And, strange to say, he even surrenders himself to the Great Man school of history, such that his main characters rarely rank below field grade, while common soldiers largely serve as extras meant to be slain or at least mauled. Still, for the most part, Croker delivers a tale that would do a Bruce Catton or Shelby Steele proud. He is conscious of the myriad historical accidents that went into two great armies’ not-so-chance encounter not so far from Washington, conscious of the shades of meaning over which contemporary historians are now arguing. On the latter score, Croker does a credible job of exploring the depths of Northern resistance to Lincoln’s call for the emancipation of Southern slaves; late in the narrative, Lincoln—who is as besieged as any general in the field—quashes a small rebellion in the making after hearing two midlevel officers discuss the wisdom of negotiating a peace by allowing slavery to endure, even as poor headache-plagued George McClellan threatens mutiny before a much larger audience. (“I wish to make an example,” Lincoln intones, and so he does.) For all the political intrigue and human-interest background, however, there’s plenty of mayhem for those who like their historical fiction awash in blood, as Croker’s surely is.

A solid debut, well researched and delivered.