It is still the bloodiest single day for American casualties in our history. The Battle of Antietam is generally considered to have ended as a tactical draw that resulted in turning back the first Confederate incursion into the North. At a time when the South was on a role and needed a win, even a tactical stalemate was a strategic defeat. Over the course of about 12 hours, 23,000 men were killed our wounded on the fields above Antietam Creek. Six Generals were killed – three on each side.
Last November, we went to Gettysburg – the turning point of the Civil War. This November, we drove a little past where we regularly go river tubing and visited Antietam on a cold, windy day. We took ourselves – along with our friend Adam – on a self-guided car tour.
The battle only took place over the course of a single day (the South would be allowed to escape over the Potomac, much to Lincoln’s chagrin), so it covered a much smaller area than Gettysburg. There are three major elements that I remember.
The Cornfield – Imagine a wide open space full of men with artillery shells raining down from both sides, and you’ll get some sense of what Col. Stephen D. Lee referred to as “artillery Hell.” This is where the battle began at sunrise and raged to a stalemate for much of the morning.
Bloody Lane - Eventually, the South fell back to a well-defended position on the western slope of a road that had sunken below ground level as the result of years and years of wagon use. To the South it must have felt like a foxhole. To the North, however, it became a chicken-shoot that would come to be known as Bloody Lane.
Burnside Bridge – More or less trapped on the wrong side of Antietam Creek, General Burnside had to take the bridge that would eventually be named after him. But the opposing bank was high ground with good cover and the approach to the bridge was exposed. Confederate troops could just sit in small ditches and shoot the Federal troops across the river with lethal results.
When the shooting stopped, 12,401 Federal casualties were almost matched by 10,316 Confederate casualties. The South tucked tail and crossed back to the South, ending it’s first invasion of the North. While the Federals didn’t win, for the first time in a major engagement, they didn’t lose either. That gave Abraham Lincoln the excuse he was waiting for to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the South and preventing the French and the English from intervening on behalf of the Confederates.
