"THE field that I have described–the field lying along the Antietam and including in its scope the little town of Sharpsburg–was destined to pass into history as the scene of the bloodiest single day of fighting of the war, and that 17th of September was to become memorable as the day of greatest carnage in the campaigns between the North and South." from Chapter 18 of From Manassas to Appomattox - Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet, Lieutenant-General Confederate Army.

Monuments

There are 103 monuments at Antietam, most of them for Union soldiers. After the war, the former Confederacy was so devastated it was difficult for the veterans to raise money to build their monuments. An update: on December 26, 1999 it was announced that a plan to erect monuments to Southern Heroes at Antietam will be built on land adjacent to the battlefield. Read the Washington Post story here.

The Bloody Lane

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On to the battle re-enactment of September 1997

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Related Links

• The Battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam - Chapter 18 of From Manassas to Appomattox - Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet, Lieutenant-General Confederate Army.
• "And the slain lay in rows", an excellent article about the Antietam battle by Peter Carlson that appeared in the Washington Post on July 30, 1995.
• Selected Civil War Photos - a collection of 1,118 photographs at the Library of Congress, includes 19 photos from Antietam
• National Park Service Antietam National Battlefield Site, it claims to be the largest National Park Service web site, very informative.
• A Concise Summary of the Battle - from the Civil War Advisory Commission report.
• Antietam, a Photographic Tour - by Todd Livesey, an excellent site with photographs, maps, and bibliography.
• Yahoo list of Civil War web sites.
• Index of Civil War Information on the Web - compiled by the U.S. Civil War Center at Louisiana State University, the index contains over 2100 web sites.
• Southern Heros to Rise at Antietam - read about the plan to erect monuments to Southerners at Antietam.

Photo notes: images shot with a Nikon N90 camera with either of three lenses: 80-200 mm f2.8 AFD Nikkor, 35-70 mm f2.8 AFD Nikkor, or 20 mm f2.8 AFD Nikkor. Tripod mounted, on a Gitzo 1228 Carbon Fiber with Arca Swiss B1 head and Really Right Stuff mounting plates. All images on Fuji Sensia 100, transfered to Kodak PhotoCD, opened in Adobe Photoshop 4, with Levels and Unsharp Mask filter applied, saved as jpeg files.