We had understood that it was often good to be able to be on
a battlefield early in the morning, before the crowds and the heat of the
day. We were able to do this at Antietam
Battlefield arriving at a little after 8:00 am.
At Antietam at critical battle was fought in the fall of 1862. On the grounds of this first major battle
fought on Northern territory the result was a blunting of this invasion and
threat on Washington. In this one-day
battle over 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing. This was the highest total to that time.
There were two particularly bloody encounters in this battle. One was at what became known as the Bloody Sunken Road where first Union soldiers were mowed down as they emerged from fully grown corn. The Confederates fired from the Sunken Road. Then the tide turned and thousands of Southern soldiers died on the road. This scene was immortalized by Brady/s photographs that gave the country a very realistic, non-romanticized view of the war.
There were many soldiers from Pennsylvania in this battle and the
state honored their contribution with a series of statues. We were
struck by how young the soldiers looked in the statues and realized that
this was accurate with the many 18 year olds who fought there.
Later in the day there was another deadly battle, this time for possession of a beautiful stone bridge. Again, after many futile charges, the Confederate troops were overwhelmed. The reality was that the Battle of Antietam was a draw. But, due to the fact that the Confederate Army withdrew from the battleground and returned to Virginia, the Union claimed victory. This outcome had huge ramifications. Britain had been considering recognizing the Confederacy. After this battle, they did not. It was also the victory that Lincoln had needed in order to issue the Emancipation Proclamation without appearing desperate.
As we left the battlefield, we stopped at the National Cemetery. Such a stop gave us a tangible sense of the real loss of life in this event. These cemeteries were filled with Union soldiers. Confederate soldiers were left buried in shallow graves throughout the battlefield or in small cemeteries in surrounding communities.
One discovery today as that the Union actually came prepared
with a plan and resources to deal with the causalities of a major battle. The doctor who was in charge, Dr. Letterman,
set up procedures and plans that established the basic military medical procedures
that are still in use today.
We got to visit a museum that was one of the field hospitals
that he set up just outside of the battlefield.
An impressive statistic was that even though there were so many wounded,
all Union casualties and many Confederate, we under a doctor’s care within 24
hours of the battle. He set up
ambulances, field hospitals, and arrangements for follow-up hospital care in
nearby towns and larger cities.
Clara Barton, whose home we visited two days earlier, was
one of the people at the battlefield before the fighting even fully began. She, as well as other nurses provided
essential care for the wounded and dying throughout the war. She also was instrumental in the ideal of
serving all the wounded no matter which side they were on.
Following up on that, we drove back into Fredrick and
visited the larger Museum of Civil War Medicine. This was a fantastically thorough look at
medicine in that time. They followed
these issues form recruitment to recuperation hospitals. We learned that hospitals
were not common prior to the Civil War, but through the experience of so many
wounded soldiers, hospitals began to spread afterwards. Prior to that, health care was mostly
provided at home by untrained family members.
Exhibits covered veterinary medicine, with over a million
horses dying in the war. We also learned about the important role African American
women and men played in health care, both in the Confederacy and Union
hospital, including most of the nurses being black women. We also found out that 95% of surgeries were amputations
performed with anesthesia. The old myth
that they just had to “bite the bullet” was not true.
Finishing up in the museum, we made about an hour’s drive to
Gettysburg, the most visited battlefield.
Here we were in crowd shock from the minute we arrived. The gigantic visitor’s center was crawling
with people, and there were tickets available for all kinds of tours, shows,
movies, nearly a Disneyland environment. We both were on overwhelm and decided
that the best thing to take a quick drive to the actual battlefield.
We planned on hooking up hook up with a ranger talk out on the battlefield
where a ranger who had been at Gettysburg for 20 years was walking us through
Picket’s Charge, a famous part of the battle.
This ranger was able to paint a very vivid picture of what was
happening, and especially how lonely it was in the top command roles for the
generals who were making these literally life or death decisions that would
impact thousands of men. He did an
amazing job.
We took a few more photos of the many, many monuments that
are all around, and then decided that we didn’t want to fight the crowds to be
there. We were feeling our own version
of battle fatigue and were ready to take off.
We wished we had the chance to see the spot where Lincoln gave the
Gettysburg Address, but not today.
A drive a couple of hours up the road put us right outside
of Valley Forge, ready for tomorrow.
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