Today is the anniversary of the bloodiest day in American history. 147 years ago, 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing following the Civil War battle of Antietam. The battle itself ended in a stalemate, having no clear winner, north or south.

I used to head down to Antietam quite a lot and since moving to Seattle, I miss it. The Gettysburg battlefield is wonderful, but if you really want a well-preserved park, Antietam has pretty much zero battlefield encroachment. Even the town of Sharpsburg is much the same.

The repercussions of this battle are still felt today. Antietam was the nail in the coffin that made England and France did not recognize the South as a sovereign nation and thus support it militarily.¹ It was also after Antietam that Lincoln, looking for something even sort of resembling a victory, signed the emancipation proclamation, freeing slaves in the southern states.²

Also, Antietam was the first battle that was really photographically documented. Alexander Gardner arrived shortly after the carnage had ended and shot 70 photographs, releasing the bulk of them as postcard-like photos. Also many newspapers made woodcuts of his photos, bringing the horrors of war to the parlors of America like never before.

My great, great, etc grandfather fought for the 51st Pennsylvania at Antietam. He, along with his comrades, were ordered to take a bridge. But taking the bridge was no easy task. It took 12,500 men three tries to overcome a Confederate force of about 500.³ The third attempt was made by the 51st New York and the 51st Pennsylvania.

The colonel in charge of the 51st Penna (and three other regiments) had canceled the regiment’s whiskey rations. They weren’t exactly thrilled about this. When he ordered them to take the bridge and after seeing so many before them fall, a corporal shouted “Will you give us our whiskey, Colonel, if we take it?”

He replied, “Yes, by God, you shall have as much as you want if you take the bridge!”

They, along with my great, great, etc grandfather took the bridge and got their whiskey.

This, like many things in war, was all for not. The 500 Confederates held up Burnside’s men long enough for Confederate reinforcements to arrive. The Confederates charged into the Union flank, shattering it and basically ending the battle. The next day, they buried their dead. The day after, the Confederates easily slipped back into the south.

You can see more of Alexander Gardner’s Antietam photography here.

The New York Times stated that Brady was able to “bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it…”

1. With England and France supporting the South, it very well could have lead to a Southern victory. [↩]
2. Actually, the E.P. was a political move. Lincoln only “freed” slaves in the states where he had no control. In the north, the blacks were still slaves. Sadly, what most people see as the “great emancipation” and the end of slavery freed not a single slave, but it worked to keep England and France out of it. [↩]
3. Though, granted, only about 4,000 of Burnside’s men took part in those attacks – he nevertheless still had 12,500 men under his command that he could have ordered to storm the bridge, but didn’t. [↩]