"On our side of the river there were noise, confusion, dust; throngs of stragglers; horsemen galloping about; wagons blocking each other, and teamsters wrangling; and a continued din of shouting, swearing and rumbling, in the midst of which men were dying, fresh wounded arriving, surgeons amputating limbs and dressing wounds, women going in and out with bandages, lint, medicines, food. An everpresent sense of anguish, dread, pity, and, I fear, hatred—these are my recollections of Antietam."
LEAVING our invalid motor in care of a garage mechanic we boarded a Norfolk & Western train Monday morning to visit Antietam battlefield. It is a ride of less than 10 minutes from Shepherdstown to the station of Antietam which is adjacent to the village of Sharpsburg. The half a century that has passed since the war has witnessed but slight change here. Nearly all the houses are of the antebellum type. The woods have been cleared at various places over the field, but otherwise the landscape has changed but little when compared with wartime photographs and sketches of the battle.
A walk through the town and the national cemetery brought us to the Hagerstown pike which parallels the battle lines on the northern half of the field. Threatening weather called for haste and I was obliged to forego the pleasure of a ramble to familiar scenes around the picturesque Burnside bridge which I had photographed 11 years before. We were interested in two parts of the field—the line of Anderson's Confederate division and the position occupied by Hooker on the Union right. In locating the former we soon found ourselves in Piper's lane and walked down to the gray stone barn which stands as solid today as on that Wednesday afternoon when Hill and Sumner struggled for the mastery of this blood-drenched farmstead.
Less than a mile beyond is the little whitewashed Dunker church which marks the key to Stonewall Jackson's position. It stands in the woods at the west side of the Hagerstown pike at the intersection of the Smoketown road. On the east side of the pike was the famous cornfield where the Union soldiers under Hooker and Mansfield engaged in deadly combat with Jackson's men. In an area covering a few acres the losses on both sides in less than four hours' fighting on the morning of September 17th probably exceeded 5,000 killed and wounded.
All the important positions occupied by the troops on both sides have been marked by tablets erected by the Federal government and many memorials have been placed by the various states. One of the most interesting monuments is that of the State of Maryland to her sons—Union and Confederate—who perished at Antietam. It stands on a knoll a short distance east of the pike opposite the Dunker church.
At 11 o'clock on Tuesday morning, July 25, our motor having been pronounced "cured," we slipped "Sometub's" moorings and after adieus to hospitable friends in Shepherdstown, started on the second half of our journey. A mile and a half below the town we passed the ford over which Lee's army retreated from Antietam and saw the cliff where the Corn Exchange regiment came to grief in its pursuit of the Confederates. A little farther on we noted what we supposed was the site of Camp McAuley where the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Pennsylvania regiment from Pittsburgh spent many a chilly bivouac in the autumn of 1862.
The scenery on the canal between Shepherdstown and Harper's Ferry is not rivaled anywhere in the country for its variety, abounding in pastoral beauty, historic interest and sublime grandeur. Our motor, being on its good behavior, the trip was uneventful. Across the river among the trees we descried the little hamlet of Falling Waters where occurred one of the first conflicts of the Civil War. We glided over Antietam creek through a picturesque aqueduct and continued for miles on through the trees at the base of the lofty cliffs of Maryland Heights.
After several stops to catch the pictures that presented themselves at every turn, we reached the lock opposite Harper's Ferry about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. We threw "Sometub's" line to a picket fence beside the canal and hastened across to the town to call at the postoffice to receive an accumulation of 10 days' mail that had been forwarded from point to point all the way from Hancock.