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So imagine it is early morning in September, 1862, and you are a young soldier whose company has found a small bit of relief under a command to halt near the banks of a flowing stream called
And this Battle of Antietam will prove to be the bloodiest single day battle in American History. In just under 12 hours the North will lose 13,000 men, and the South will lose 10,000. The counts are not exaggerated – they include those men killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or “lost.” And the battle in the cornfield will become the scene of some of the most intense carnage of the day; here it is a blur of blue and gray, of guns and bayonets, of blood and sweat, of misery and death. The battle comes quickly. Men are screaming and howling and beating and stabbing each other in a murderous rage. So many are killed so quickly that it begins to seem the corn has been sheared by the fallen. Blood seeps the ground and the field becomes a tacky bog. The sky is alive with grapeshot (a small, lead canon-ball that looks like a grape) and the cries of men whose bones have been shattered. The casualties are horrifying and the yelling of soldiers is deafening as “control” of the cornfield sways back and forth – the Union generals will command a new rush of attacks as many as fifteen times.
Stonewall Jackson is on horseback, trying to rally your company. The Union objective is the white-washed church (Dunker’s Church) in the distance; to get there they must first secure this cornfield. The Union commander, Joseph Hooker, knows this. And he will sacrifice 2500 men in two hours to do it. The field becomes steeped in rows and rows of dead or wounded soldiers. Hooker is himself shot in the foot, and in another two hours he will be unable to command his men to move any further. There is a strange stall in the fighting, and a wild look in men’s eyes as they step away from each other. This battle in the cornfield has become a bloody stalemate… even when new fighting begin to form around its edges.
Now imagine that you are one of those young Confederate soldiers, and that you have been lucky enough to survive. You’ve taken a coat and a pair of shoes from a dead Union man, you’ve lost your knapsack, and you are being forced to retreat even as the gun in your hands is on fire from constant shooting. There is blood in your hair, on your clothes, on your hands… it is everywhere. And there is no time to gather the wounded who are crying for bandages and water. There is no time to think. Already there is a roar in the distance where Union soldiers are trying to take one of the bridges spanning this creek. There is also fighting from the woods, where another stalemate is underway in a place that will later be nicknamed “
The Battle of Antietam is a series of smaller skirmishes known as the “Cornfield,” then “
Your eyes sweep over the hills and you can see another fight, this one over a single bridge. The sun is hot in the afternoon and you wonder why the Union troops don’t just wade through the creek’s waters in their efforts to get to Longstreet’s men. There is shouting and you glimpse the figure of Robert E. Lee and you can see what he is seeing – the Union soldiers can do nothing but advance on the bridge as the creek underneath is protected by two-foot sloping hills. To wade through the water and then attempt to move up the slippery hill would be suicide… although there are soldiers who are trying to do it, as the bridge has become bottle-necked. The Union soldiers keep coming, even as the Confederate guns cut them down. They just keep coming. The Union commander, aptly named “Burnside,” keeps sending them. You fear your own company will soon be marched toward the fray, but you are still positioned near the cornfield, and by supper-time the fighting has ceased and you understand that it is the Union soldiers who are pulling back. The Union commander Burnside is appalled by the casualties and he is moving quickly away from the bridge… and, indeed, entirely away from the battle, itself. He has lost his nerve. It is understandable. And you can see the dust kicking up from the horse’s retreat. It is an army of men, so many men, moving in frayed columns away from you. The blurring of their blue coats begins to blend with the dusky horizon.
You have survived the Battle of Antietam, and though you do not yet know it, the single most bloody day in the History of America. You are one of the lucky ones. Even as your feet are blistered and your body is aching, you are asked to help in the recovery of the Confederate wounded – and the stacking of the