REGIMENTAL EXCURSION.
In 1889, the 1-10-29th Maine Regiment[3] Association made an excursion to the various battle fields in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia where the regiment had fought. Friday, October 4th, was the day of the visit to Antietam. Not one of the company had been there for twenty-five years, yet on arriving in East Woods we readily and surely identified the fighting position of the regiment, which was known as the “Tenth Maine,” at the time of the battle. We found that the west face of the woods had been considerably cut away, and that many of the trees inside the woods had been felled, but there was no serious change in the neighborhood where we fought, excepting that a road had been laid out exactly along the line of battle where we fired our first volley. We have since learned that in 1872, the County bought a fifteen feet strip of land, 961 feet long, bordering that part of the northeast edge of the woods, which lies between Samuel Poffenberger’s lane and the Smoketown road, and moved the “worm fence” fifteen feet into the field.[4] Excepting as these changes affected the view, all agreed that everything in our vicinity had a “natural look.” The chief features were “the bushes,” directly in rear of our right companies; the Croasdale Knoll, further to the right and rear; the Smoketown Road, which enters East Woods between the bushes and the Knoll, and runs past our front through the woods; the low land in our right front; the “open,” easily discernable through the woods; the rising land with its ledges, big and little, in the front; the denser woods in the left front; the worm fence before noted, and the long ledge behind it, against which our left companies sheltered themselves by Captain Jordan’s thoughtful guidance; and the gully beginning in the rear of our position and leading down to the great stone barn and stone mansion,[5] with its immense spring of water.
The large oak in rear of our right, to which Col. Beal crawled after he was wounded, was still standing a few paces up (northeast) the Smoketown road, and another good sized tree nearer the front was recognized by Capt. (then Sergt.) Goss as the one from which he first opened fire. Lt.-Col. Emerson (Capt. of H, the right Co.) stood where he stood in 1862 and pointed out to our guests place after place which he recognized.
Many of “the bushes” of 1862 had grown into sizable trees; they, with Beal’s and Goss’s trees and the Smoketown road fence, had been a serious obstacle to the advance of our right companies.
The scar, or depression in the ground, where we had buried a few of our dead (northeast of Beal’s tree), was still visible, but repeated plowing since 1889 has entirely effaced it.
Our excursion was entirely for pleasure; we had no thought of controversy, nor even of the enlightenment of the Sharpsburg people, who knew nothing of the true locality where Mansfield was wounded, but were showing two or three erroneous places to visitors. We defended the truth, photographed the position, but found it difficult for several reasons to decide by several feet upon the exact spot of the wounding.
It is necessary now to go back to 1862 and tell the story of the battle as seen by the 10th Maine; and as since the war a generation has grown up that knows nothing of the way soldiers are arranged for marching and fighting, it is best to give a great many explanations that may seem unnecessary to an old soldier.