Civil War Weekend: Antietam

Having been obssessed with the movie "Gettysburg" as a teenager, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect as I toured the area. I knew next to nothing about Antietam, however. I chose to visit it because it was a National Park Service property in the area, and because it was a Civil War battlefield.

I arrived at Antietam just as it opened and checked out the small yet interesting museum and the film "A Visit to Antietam," which chronicles Lincoln's visit to examine the army and express his displeasure at Union General George B. McLellan's failure to pursue the Confederate army. Having a narrative thrust made the film more interesting than the typical NPS documentary-style film.

After collecting my NPS Passport stamp and a map of the auto tour route, I headed out. The first stop is the Dunker Church, which ended up being sort of in the middle of all the fighting.

As I traveled the battlefield, I became slightly obsessed with cannon. They are so interesting to photograph. Today they stand as proud, silent, almost beautiful, sentinels marking the places where two armies battled. In reality, of course, they were instruments of death.

The most striking thing about Antietam is how bloody the battle was. In college I had the opportunity to do a project on Matthew Brady, who photographed many battles and their immediate aftermaths. The Civil War was the first war to be documented on film, and some of the pictures, especially those I've seen of Antietam, are quite graphic. The memorial below stands along "Bloody Lane," a sunken road occupied by the Confederates during the battle. Many, many soldiers met their end in this trench, as the Union sent regiment after regiment, in long lines, across an open field towards the road.

Today the area is so peaceful and bucolic, especially on a sunny, blue-skied day like this one. It's easy to forget that you are walking where young men, some really boys, gave their lives for country and cause.

The Antietam tour, like the Gettysburg one, send you through the events of the day in a basically chronological fashion, ending up at the Antietam National Cemetery. One of the final skirmishes of the day was at this bridge over Antietam Creek, where Union General Ambrose Burnside finally succeeded in pushing the Confederate army back. The bridge now bears his name.

I skipped the cemetery but made a brief stop outside the Pry Field Hospital museum, which was unfortunately not open that early on a Sunday morning. (I was able to visit the Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD, of which this is a satellite. More on that in my next post).

I would definitely recommend spending a few hours at Antietam if you're ever in the Sharpsburg, MD area. The relatively small size of the battlefield and the excellent visitor center museum and film make it a good place to get an overview of a battle and even to stretch your legs as you head up I-81.