Antietam BattleField Natl Park

Marcia and I took a trip to Hagerstown Maryland. I did not create any images of the surrounding countryside, which is really beautiful, but, I did of our visit to this battlefield.

The Northern Folks named Civil War battles after a landmark. Antietam Creek and Bridge. The Southern Folk usually used a nearby town. The Battle of Sharpsburg.

This battle was significant for a number of reasons. It was then and now, the largest number of casualties in war on a single day for this country. 23,000 killed, wounded or missing. From 6:00am to roughly 4:00pm on Sept 17, 1862.

It marked the first time Lee got this far north and retreated. The only other time was Gettysburg where 51,000 casualties occurred over 2 1/2 days.

It also marked an end for Britain' and France' consideration to support the South. After Antietam, the South were indeed on their own.

At that time, the two opposing sides would largely form ranks, rows and rows of soldiers and march into each other. Soldiers do not fight for glory or some heroic cause, not even for us, but for each -other-. When a man would fall, another would step up from behind and "close the ranks".

As you look at these few images, try to imagine what that meant as you walked directly into a cannon as you watched the opposing man light the fuse and you -knew- what was happening to you. As, if you ducked somewhere, the guy behind you would receive what was meant for -you-.

The projectile of choice was a sock of shrapnel. Not a single smooth rounded bullet, or ball, but a charge full of small ragged pieces of metal. When they ran out of that, they would throw in anything they could find and light the fuse.

Or, where the opposing side had five times the forces you had and, you kept walking towards the deafening racket, the smoke, the flashes of light from the powder and, the bullets whistling past you. Some of them 3/4" in diameter.

One commanding officer of a battery remarked later they fired over 1,000 rounds with their cannon in three hours time.

Now, the fields are solemnly quiet and serene.

That day so long ago, it was hell on earth. Indeed.

As I walked a very small portion of it, I tried to go back to that day, when 20,000 Confederate huddled behind the woods of the Dunker church. Or, a soldier awoke from his sleep and gazed out his tent to a calm twilight of fog and mist over the lowlands. Or a General, wondering what the enemy was up to.

Or, being one of a team as we charged across Antietam Bridge as the South held the better ground. Cannon shells exploding all around. And you could hear the thud when a bullet hit your friends about you screaming as they fell in a hail of bullets from those who were behind rocks or fences or trees. And, you had to keep going to an unknown fate.

May God Bless these men, from both sides, who made this country possible.

 

(These images from Wikipedia)

Antietam Bridge

 

The Bloody Lane

"The carnage from 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the sunken road gave it the name Bloody Lane, leaving about 5,600 casualties (Union 3,000, Confederate 2,600) along the 800-yard road."

"The dead were so thick, one could walk from on top one to the other without ever touching the ground."

"We were shooting them like sheep in a pen. If a bullet missed the mark at first it was liable to strike the further bank, angle back, and take them secondarily. Sergeant of the 61st New York"

 

On the Road to Hagerstown

(Of The Cornfeld)

"...the most deadly fire of the war. Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of the soldiers, canteens and haversacks are riddled with bullets, the dead and wounded go down in scores. Captain Benjamin F. Cook of the 12th Massachusetts Infantry, on the attack by the Louisiana Tigers at the Cornfield"

"... every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the [Confederates] slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker"

"The Tigers were beaten back eventually when the Federals brought up a battery of 3-inch ordnance rifles and rolled them directly into the Cornfield, point-blank fire that slaughtered the Tigers, who lost 323 of their 500 men."

 

Lincoln and McClellan Oct 3rd, 1862 after the battle. Lincoln commanded McClellan to "fight" but the General was very conservative. Lincoln was quoted as saying, "If you will not use your Army, can I borrow it for a while?"

Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command of the Army of the Potomac on November 7, effectively ending the general's military career.

 

Now, some snapshots ...

 

Imagine this church, filled with moaning and screaming men. Inside and out. Blood all over. Wounded, dying, surgeons, orderlies, soldiers. Out of bandages or chloroform, using corn husks to soak up blood and using saws to severe limbs as four to five men held down the victim as he screams, and passes out from the shock.

And, an orderly fetches the severed limb and tosses it out a window onto the pile of a hundred others beside the church.

Imagine ...

 

 

The Mumma Cemetary, on the Mumma farm in the middle of the battlefiald.

Someone put a penney on the top of each stone.

Marcia in the older part of the Mumma Cemetary.

 

 

A Country Lane

 

These images are from Antietam National Cemetary. These are only Union dead. The Confederates buried their dead in nearby towns of Sharpsburg, Antietam and Hagerstown.

"Here lie 4,776 Union soldiers, more than a third of them unknown. Built by Maryland and other Union states, the cemetary was dedicated five years after the battle. In 1878 it was transferred to the War Deptartment and in 1933 the Cemetary and the Battlefield Site were transferred to the National Park Service, US Department of the Interior.

The Cemetary was closed for further burial in 1953. In addition to the Civil War dead, 261 verterans of later wars are also buried here."

(Based on the National Cemetary map surveyed and drawn by Chas P Kohler, CE in 1867)

Minnesota dead are buried in plot #5 in the upper right corner.

 

 

On a personal note, I sincerely believe, any one person who burns our flag, or otherwise, makes lite of these dead in any way, should be allowed to leave our country for one of their choosing. I will donate $100 towards their one way non-returnable ticket.

Our country -is- a country because of these men and tens of thousands more like them. Then, or now ...

Later ...