The News & TeleGraff

I spent yesterday with a friend from the Crimson visiting the Civil War battlefield at Antietam. The battlefield, which centers around Antietam Creek, but is actually in the town of Sharpsburg, was the bloodiest day on American soil. In the single day of fighting, out of about 130,000 troops, 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing by day's end.

The scale of the devastation was incredible.

The National Park Service tells the story of the battle:

On September 16, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan confronted Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland. At dawn September 17, Hooker’s corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee’s left flank that began the single bloodiest day in American military history. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller’s cornfield and fighting swirled around the Dunker Church. Union assaults against the Sunken Road eventually pierced the Confederate center, but the Federal advantage was not followed up.

Late in the day, Burnside’s corps finally got into action, crossing the stone bridge over Antietam Creek and rolling up the Confederate right. At a crucial moment, A.P. Hill’s division arrived from Harpers Ferry and counterattacked, driving back Burnside and saving the day. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill....

Another longer summary is here, if you're interested.

The battle was critical for the North because it marked the end of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia's first foray into the foray. Lee's army limped back across the Potomac following the battle. Antietam was important, too, because Lincoln used the "victory" as a chance to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He had been waiting to do so until the North won a battle, hoping that it would not look like a desperate attempt from a losing side.

Yesterday, the Antietam battlefield was almost eerily quiet. Under a brillant blue sky and an intense fall sun, Andrew and I wandered the withering cornfields and fields (My complete set of photos is here). There were perhaps a total of six other people there, and the dominant sound through the day were the deafening crickets.

We walked through the cornfields where thousands of soldiers were cut down, traveled the sunken road which was filled with bodies by the end of the day, and then stood at the tranquil Burnside Bridge, where 500 Georgian soldiers on the hill above held off an entire corps of the Union Army for nearly the entire day. The saddest part of visiting the bridge was that no soldier bothered to check the depth of the creek. Had they wanted to ford it, it was only waist deep; but, instead, the Union lost hundreds of soldiers fighting to cross the bridge.

All-in-all, it was a very moving moment—underscoring the supreme sacrifice of battle and also the utter waste of war. Some units at Antietam suffered 50 percent casualties in under 20 minutes. I couldn't help but think of Iraq and our troops there while standing at Antietam. Somehow, I doubt that any of their sacrifice will be honored with statues in Fallujah or Najaf.