As I said in the correction to my last blog, I wanted to devote one separate entry to Antietam. As we travelled around Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and later Kentucky, we crossed uncountable numbers of civil war battlefields. They are everywhere out here. You can't travel around over here and not encounter them.
We'd heard about the famous battle at Antietam creek and decided to go there. It was the single most bloody one-day battle in America's history.
"The Army of the Potomac, under the command of George McClellan, mounted a
series of powerful assaults against Robert E. Lee’s forces near
Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. The morning assault and
vicious Confederate counterattacks swept back and forth through Miller’s
Cornfield and the West Woods."
The people were called Dunkers because they believed in full immersion into the river at baptism.
Me standing at the edge of the west wood. The little Dunker Church is in front of me.
Oh how deceiving is the peace and beauty of this gently rolling Miller's farmland, cornfields and woodlands.
Who would now guess the horrors these trees saw, and the blood that seeped into this land?
A mock soldiers' camp. This would have been a common sight here.
The sunken roadway nicknamed "Bloody Lane" because of all the bodies and the blood of that dreadful day.
View across the battlefield from the Observation Tower.
The extent of this battlefield was astounding.
I wonder... if the night is still enough... if the breeze blows in just the right direction... if all is quiet... do you still hear the moans and cries of the wounded and dying...?
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