Antietam

On Twitter the Library of Congress has retweeted this morsel from the WorldDigitalLibrary: "Battle of #Antietam was #OnThisDay in 1862. 23,000 killed. ... " The Libraryof Congress should know better. The butcher's bill* for Antietam, the 23,000, is the number of casualties . The number of dead, Union and Confederate combined, in the bloodiest day in U.S. military history, was 3,650; wounded, over 17,000; missing or captured, nearly 1,800.    *The mordant nineteenth-century term, often attributed to Admiral Lord Nelson, for the human costs of a battle.   

On Twitter the Library of Congress has retweeted this morsel from the WorldDigitalLibrary: "Battle of #Antietam was #OnThisDay in 1862. 23,000 killed. ... " The Libraryof Congress should know better. The butcher's bill* for Antietam, the 23,000, is the number of casualties . The number of dead, Union and Confederate combined, in the bloodiest day in U.S. military history, was 3,650; wounded, over 17,000; missing or captured, nearly 1,800.    *The mordant nineteenth-century term, often attributed to Admiral Lord Nelson, for the human costs of a battle.   

National Park Service officials have recommended changes which, if adopted, could alter the purpose and character of Antietam National Battlefield. They want to restore the Western Maryland site near Sharpsburg to the way it was before the Civil War's bloodiest battle took place. But the Park Service must take care to adhere to the original reason for establishing the park.Congress approved the project in 1890 to commemorate Antietam as a national site, to be kept in its authentic state to honor the 23,100 Union and Confederate soldiers who were killed and wounded there on Sept.

One hundred fifty years ago today, two great armies clashed in a titanic struggle that would decide the fate of a nation. "Around a cornfield and a little white Dunker church, around a stone bridge and in a pasture lane worn by cow paths, surged a human tornado," wrote Carl Sandburg many years later. Never before or since has such a deadly concentration of firepower been unleashed on the American continent. The Battle of Antietam, waged across a meandering stream called Antietam Creek in Western Maryland near Hagerstown, was the first great turning point of the American Civil War and the bloodiest single day of combat ever waged on U.S. soil.

In anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, the Laurel Museum is opening a mini-exhibit Sunday, Sept. 9 that includes former Laurel Mill superintendent George Nye's handwritten account of the battle. The exhibit includes a letter Nye wrote to his wife, Charlotte (Charlie), on Oct. 1 shortly after the battle; Nye's war belt and buckle; and his 1879 diary, which references the Battle of Antietam. Antietam was the bloodiest single day in American military history, with more than 20,000 soldiers killed or wounded.

- The fighting that killed or wounded 21,000 Americans in the rolling hills of Western Maryland was over in about 12 grisly hours. But a century and a half after the bloodiest day in American military history, the struggle to preserve the ground where Union and Confederate soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam only now appears close to a declaration of victory. As Americans gather to honor the sacrifice of those who fell on Sept. 17, 1862 - as they will do this weekend and Monday on the 150th anniversary - they will do so at one of the nation's best-preserved Civil War sites.

Washington--AS THE SMOKE of battle cleared over Antietam in 1862, two noncombatants picked their way through the human carnage. They were armed not with guns, but with new devices of profound importance for the future of war: cameras.They had been sent to Maryland by Matthew Brady, at whose New York gallery there subsequently appeared an exhibit, ''The Dead of Antietam.'' A New York Times reporter wrote: ''The dead of the battlefield come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. . . . Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought the bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along our streets, he has done something very like it.''A century later, in Indochina in the 1960s, cameras would change the relationship between war and the home front, and hence would limit the ability of democracies to have recourse to force.

SHARPSBURG -- Betty Fairbourn washed and scrubbed her front porch. Her neighbors along Main Street painted trim around windows and doors, planted flowers and hung the Stars and Stripes.Remembering their own and the country's war dead on Decoration Day -- the original name by which Memorial Day is still widely known here -- is a big affair in this quiet, small Western Maryland town."It's the most important holiday in Sharpsburg -- next to Christmas," said Jan Wetterer, a town resident who is a member of the committee that organized yesterday's 127th annual parade.

National Park Service officials are recommending approval of a controversial management plan for Antietam National Battlefield -- one that would restore the site to how it looked before the historic Civil War battle, a document obtained by The LTC Sun reveals.The draft for Antietam, dated Oct. 26, shows that the par service favors what has been called "Alternative B" -- a plan that would restore the battlefield in Sharpsburg "to its approximate appearance on the eve of the battle of Sept.

Thanks to an Anne Arundel County couple, tourists and the ghost of Confederate Gen. James Longstreet can continue to hang out together on the Antietam battlefield.The Piper House, probably the only bed-and-breakfast inn operating smack in the middle of a Civil War battlefield -- and certainly the only one that once served as the headquarters of a Confederate general -- had been in danger of closing. Its operator, Douglas Reed, and the National Park Service, which administers the house and battlefield, had been unable to agree on changes to the 56-year lease he had signed in 1985.

- The fighting that killed or wounded 21,000 Americans in the rolling hills of Western Maryland was over in about 12 grisly hours. But a century and a half after the bloodiest day in American military history, the struggle to preserve the ground where Union and Confederate soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam only now appears close to a declaration of victory. As Americans gather to honor the sacrifice of those who fell on Sept. 17, 1862 - as they will do this weekend and Monday on the 150th anniversary - they will do so at one of the nation's best-preserved Civil War sites.

In anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, the Laurel Museum is opening a mini-exhibit Sunday, Sept. 9 that includes former Laurel Mill superintendent George Nye's handwritten account of the battle. The exhibit includes a letter Nye wrote to his wife, Charlotte (Charlie), on Oct. 1 shortly after the battle; Nye's war belt and buckle; and his 1879 diary, which references the Battle of Antietam. Antietam was the bloodiest single day in American military history, with more than 20,000 soldiers killed or wounded.

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Antietam National Battlefield is one of my favorite Civil War sites, even though it appears my ancestor missed this fight, the bloodiest day of any battles in the war. About 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing on Sept. 17, 1862, after 12 hours of savage fighting between Union and Confederate armies in the town of Sharpsburg in Western Maryland. The battle ended Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North, forcing the Confederate troops back across the Potomac River into Virginia.

The Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown is helping stretch taxpayer dollars this summer with a hefty contribution to the Antietam National Battlefield. The unlikely donation - more than 110 tons of field stone - is being put to use by the National Park Service in the restoration of buildings at three historic farms that survived the bloodiest one-day fight of the Civil War, on Sept. 17, 1862. More than 22,000 Americans on both sides were killed or wounded in the first major battle on Northern soil.

Planning process needs total overhaul In the editorial "Controlling growth" (March 13), The Sun states that "the current planning process is clearly broken." I strongly agree with that position. Here in Howard County, we have a beautifully written general plan, as is required by the state. The county executive and the County Council are responsible for implementing the plan through the comprehensive zoning amendment process, in which the status of all properties and regulations is up for revision.

With its latest -- and biggest -- issue, Antietam Review enters its second decade. Based in Hagerstown, the Review is Maryland's only serious, nationally circulated literary magazine.This time it publishes eight short stories, the work of 16 poets (one by a Romanian, Iona Ieronim, in translation) and 21 black-and-white photographs. There are interviews with Diane Wolkstein, storyteller, and Joyce Riser Kornblatt, professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park.Still basking in the glow of its inclusion in a recent "Best 50 Litmags From 50 States" listing, Antietam Review has received close to 500 verbal and photographic works from the United States and abroad for its 1994 issue.

Maryland opened its first comprehensive driving tour of Civil War sites Friday. The tour was created to interpret the events leading up to and following the Sept. 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of fighting in American history. The Antietam Campaign Trail covers 90 miles of scenic and historic roads starting at White's Ferry in Montgomery County and traveling through Frederick into Sharpsburg in Washington County. Bugle trailblazer signs lead visitors to waysides where interpretive markers contain both military and anecdotal accounts of the two opposing armies as they maneuvered toward their encounter on that fateful day in 1862.

ANTIETAM NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD -- Rocky Rosacker stood on the southern side of the Sunken Road - ground held by Confederate troops at the outset of the bloodiest day in American history. The yellow-green fields to the north that September morning in 1862 were Union territory. The Annapolis man opened his arms wide, conjuring ghost armies in blue and gray. "This is what Lee saw," said Rosacker, himself a combat veteran of the Marine Corps. "This is what Longstreet saw. This is what those guys faced.

WASHINGTON -- Antietam National Battlefield survived the bloodiest day in American history. Now, historic perservationists say, it's under threat from modern technology. The patch of Western Maryland farmland, where bucolic vistas have remained virtually unchanged since the September day in 1862 when about 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in action, was named one of the nation's most endangered battlefields yesterday. The threat: a proposed cell phone tower that would rise 30 feet above the treeline - marring, critics say, views from nearly all of the battlefield's famous vantage points.