Antietam Remembered

One of the bloodiest battles in American history occurred in a Maryland field. A journalist from The Washington Post writes of a recent visit to Antietam:

It was here on Sept. 17, 1862, in the rolling hills of Western Maryland near the town of Sharpsburg, that more than 23,000 Americans became casualties in 12 hours of savage fighting, a single day of loss unsurpassed in U.S. history. In these fields 145 years ago, the Federal army stopped cold a seemingly inexorable Confederate offensive under Robert E. Lee. It gave President Abraham Lincoln the political power to issue a proclamation that started the downfall of slavery.

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For the next seven hours, I tramped the battlefield, seeing it from myriad perspectives, and unearthed some of the lesser-known tales of this great battle. Here's what I discovered.

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