A Bridge of Sighs
This photograph commemorates the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862.A Union soldier recalled his experiences at this battlefield near Antietam Creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland. "I was lying on my back, supported on my elbows, watching the shells explode overhead and speculating as to how long I could hold up my finger before it would be shot off, for the very air seemed full of bullets, when the order to get up was given. I turned over quickly to look at Col. Kimball, who had given the order, thinking he had become suddenly insane."
A Confederate soldier wrote, "Such a storm of balls I never conceived it possible for men to live through. Shot and shell shrieking and crashing, canister and bullets whistling and hissing most fiend-like through the air until you could almost see them. In that mile's ride I never expected to come back alive."
Indeed, those who lived through Antietam were lucky. More than 23,000 people were killed, injured, or missing at the end of the day.
Documenting a landscape that hides a cemetery, photographer Alexander Gardner depicts a bridge across Antietam Creek—"the only monument of many gallant men who sleep in the meadow at its side."
Source: National Park Service. Antietam National Battlefield website at http://www.nps.gov/anti/home.htm.
Pictured: Alexander Gardner, 1821 Scotland–1882 USA, Burnside Bridge, Across Antietam Creek, Maryland, from Gardner's Sketchbook of the Civil War, 1862, published 1865, albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard, 7 x 9 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.
This photograph commemorates the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862.A Union soldier recalled his experiences at this battlefield near Antietam Creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland. "I was lying on my back, supported on my elbows, watching the shells explode overhead and speculating as to how long I could hold up my finger before it would be shot off, for the very air seemed full of bullets, when the order to get up was given. I turned over quickly to look at Col. Kimball, who had given the order, thinking he had become suddenly insane."