'And the Slain Lay in Rows'
There's not much there. It's just a field, really. But people come every day, sometimes from far away, to stand and look.
They park their cars on a road that rises and dips with the rolling hills. They step out and glance around. They bow their heads to read the sign and then straighten up to stare out at the field. There's a split-rail fence and, in the distance, some farm buildings -- a white silo, a fading barn. In between there's hay -- 30 acres of tall green stalks of grass topped with tiny seeds. When the breeze picks up, the stalks begin to quiver, then shake, then sway back and forth like sea grasses caught in gentle waves.
It's beautiful to watch, hypnotic and mesmerizing, but that's not why the people stand there for so long. They're staring at the grass but they're seeing something else, something that hasn't been there for 133 years. They seldom speak. When they do, it's usually in a hush, nothing loud enough to drown out the drone of the crickets.
This field of hay is called "the Cornfield" because that's what it was at dawn on September 17, 1862. By noon, though, the corn was gone, cut to the ground by bullets and cannon shells, and the field was covered with thousands of dead or broken men. It was the bloodiest part of the bloodiest day in this country's history -- the Battle of Antietam. Nearly 23,000 Americans were killed, wounded or missing in action outside Sharpsburg, Md., that day -- nearly four times the American casualties on D-Day. When the sun set and the battle ended, the two opposing armies were still in about the same positions they'd been the previous night. Yet something was won that day, something so profound that George F. Will once called the Battle of Antietam "the second most important day in American history." July 4, 1776, gave us the Declaration of Independence. September 17, 1862, gave us the Emancipation Proclamation.
That terrible day at Antietam, the First Texas Regiment battles for the Cornfield. Of 226 engaged, 40 returned unharmed.
Today, few Americans know much about Antietam, and even fewer visit the battlefield. More than a million and a half tourists cram into Gettysburg every year and nearly a million visit Manassas, but fewer than 240,000 venture to Antietam. Those who do find that Sharpsburg hasn't changed much since the battle. It has a few inns, a gallery of Civil War art and a tiny museum, but not a single motel or souvenir stand or fast-food joint. Except for a small stone visitors center, a cemetery and some monuments, the battlefield, too, looks about the same as it did before the shooting started. Most of the fields where soldiers fought and died are still farms where families coax crops from the ground.
Antietam is only 70 miles from Washington, but it's off the tourist track, away from the interstates, tucked into the beautiful hills of western Maryland. It's not a place you stumble upon by accident. People tend to come to Antietam in search of something -- a fallen ancestor, a glimpse of history, a place to contemplate their country. They find a field, a sunken dirt road, an old stone bridge, a tiny white church -- all of them haunted by an air of tragedy so palpable that it compels almost everyone to whisper, as if they were visiting a cathedral.
Federal Troops retreat from the Cornfield
They stand silently, gazing out at the swaying grass of the Cornfield. Ask them what they're thinking and nearly all of them repeat some variation of the same three questions:
How could they have done it?
Could we do it today?
Could I?
"The Union forces in Virginia have suffered three catastrophic defeats in 1862," says Jerry Holsworth. "They have been humiliated by General Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, mauled by Lee in the Seven Days Battle, and again at Manassas. They huddle around Washington, D.C., in a state of very low morale . . ."
Holsworth is a park ranger at the Antietam National Battlefield. He's standing behind the visitors center on a sweltering afternoon, delivering the standard half-hour orientation speech in his own flamboyant style. Spread out in a semicircle around him are two dozen tourists in shorts and sneakers and T-shirts. Holsworth has asked where they're from, and they've replied Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio. Holsworth is from Texas. At 44, he's working his second summer on the Antietam battlefield.
And now he's standing in his Park Service uniform -- gray shirt, green pants, Smokey Bear hat -- telling the story of the battle, enlivening it with dramatic flourishes and plenty of body English. He tells how Robert E. Lee's Confederates have driven the Union army out of Virginia and back to Washington, how Abraham Lincoln is desperate for a victory so he can issue the Emancipation Proclamation, how Lee has seized the initiative by crossing the Potomac and invading Maryland, hoping that a victory on Northern soil will bring aid from England and France.
"Lee's army is suffering, folks," Holsworth says in his Texas drawl. "Half the men are barefoot. They're in rags. They've been fightin' continuously for three or four months without a break. Many of them are livin' on green corn and creek water."
General Robert E. Lee
Still, the Rebels easily seized the city of Frederick, and Lee decided to take a dangerous gamble. Knowing that Union Gen. George McClellan was a slow, cautious man, Lee figured that he could divide his already-outnumbered army, send part of it to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, and then reunite it -- all before McClellan attacked. Lee issued Special Order 191, which detailed his plan. But one of his officers wrapped a copy of the order around three cigars and accidentally dropped it in a field near Frederick, where a Union soldier found it. It was passed up the ranks to McClellan, who instantly realized that he could destroy Lee's divided army piece by piece. He pondered this for 18 hours, then sent his army after Lee.
General George McClellan
Holsworth sweeps his hand out in a long horizontal arc, pointing out the ridge that his audience is standing on. "Lee will bring what's left of his army here to Sharpsburg Ridge with the idea of giving up the campaign and skedaddling back to Virginia," he says. He pauses dramatically. "But that night Lee would see the letter that would change his mind. Dear General Lee: Harpers Ferry will surrender in the morning. Signed T.J. Jackson, Major General, Confederate States Army.' "
The next day, as promised, Jackson captured Harpers Ferry. He left Gen. A.P. Hill and a few thousand men to handle the surrender, then marched his troops back here, to the high ground between the Potomac River and Antietam Creek. Reinforced, Lee decided to stand and fight. The Rebels, about 40,000 strong, dug in along Sharpsburg Ridge. The Federals, 80,000 of them, prepared to attack. Everyone on both sides realized that tomorrow would bring a cataclysmic battle. The sun set amid the sound of sniper fire. Rain began to fall.
"The day before the battle, the soldiers came around and said, You all better get out, there's gonna be a hell of a battle here,' " says Earl Roulette. "That was on my great-granddaddy Roulette's farm. He stayed during the battle. A lot of people took their families and went out along the river to a big cave."
Roulette had three great-granddaddies with farms on the battlefield -- a Roulette, a Snavely and a Rohrbach. He lives on a fourth farm, on the other side of town, near the spot where Lee made his headquarters. He farmed it for more than half a century before he retired -- "wheat and corn and barley and hay and cattle, pretty much the same as they did then." In 1976, he sold a big chunk of it to a company that built a development where the streets are named after Confederate generals -- Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, Hill.
Confederate dead on the Hagerstown road at the Battle of Antietam
"Everybody thinks the Civil War was forever ago," he says. "I'm only 75 and a half, and my grandfather was 12 during the battle. He hid down at Snavely's Ford. I remember my grandpappy talking about it. What I'm saying is: It's just one generation."
He's an old man with a bald head fringed by a few wisps of white hair, but he's still spry enough to hop up from his dining room table to fetch a few mementos. He comes back with an old document encased in plastic. It's a handwritten list of everything his great-grandfather William Roulette lost during the battle -- 8 hogs, 12 sheep, 3 calves, 3 barrels of flour, 155 bushels of potatoes, 220 bushels of apples . . . It goes on for page after page.
General A.P. Hill
"See, this was September," he says. "These farmers were all ready for winter. In those days, you didn't run over to A&P or Food Lion to get your stuff. If you didn't have it in the fall, you did without till spring."
William Roulette filed his list with the federal government, hoping to be compensated for his losses, but his great-grandson doubts that he ever got a nickel. "He had to prove it was taken by the Northern army," he says, "and how the hell could you prove it when both armies were fighting there?"
He points to another item on the list -- "burial ground for 700 soldiers." He smiles wryly. "Can you imagine 700 soldiers buried in your back yard?"
Confederate dead in the Sunken Lane at the Battle of Antietam
He puts down the list, rummages through a metal tray piled with battle relics he's found on his farm over the years -- bullets, belt buckles, cannonballs. He picks out a dime. It looks almost new, but the date reads 1861. "It lay out there for over a hundred years," he says. "I just found it a couple of years ago."
He digs out a pair of bullets with tooth marks in them. "You've heard the expression biting the bullet'?" he asks. "Well, here's a couple that was bit on." He figures they were bitten by soldiers fighting the pain of getting a wounded arm or leg amputated -- a common operation after the battle. "You don't go around biting bullets unless you got a pretty good reason."
He sorts through the pile and picks out a thin gold ring. He didn't find it on his farm; it was passed down from his grandpa Snavely.
"A soldier died in their house," he says. "I believe it was an officer and not just a plain soldier. Whichever side it was, soldiers from the other side were coming and they had to get rid of him, 'cause if you had an enemy soldier in your house, you were the enemy. Feelings ran a little high along about then. So anyhow, they took him and they dumped him in the creek. And before they threw him in, my grandpa Snavely took this ring off his finger."
General John Bell Hood
He holds the ring gently between his thumb and forefinger. Its circle is broken. There's a piece missing, a section cut or worn away. He raises it up to where it can catch the sunlight that streams through the window, but it's too old and tarnished to glimmer.
"This meant something to somebody," he says.
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