BPhoto_Antietam_Natl

"The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on September 17, 1862, climaxed the first of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's two attemtps to carry the war into the North. About 40,000 Southerners were pitted against the 87,000-man Federal Army of the Potomac under Gen. George B. McClellan. And when the fighting ended, the course of the American Civil War had been greatly altered."

"Americans fought back and forth across the Cornfield for three hours. Those three hours may encompass the most concentrated fury in American history. The Union first Corps and Twelfth Corps were fought out. On the Conferedate side, Jackson's corps and Hood's division were wrecked. The battle moved on. Union General Hooker described what was left:

Every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battle-field."

"Colonel Edward Ferraro was a teetotaler - he had disciplined the 51st Pennsylvania by taking away their whiskey ration. It was well after noon when he addressed the 51st New York and the 51st Pennsylvania Regiments:

"It is General Burnside's special request that the two 51st's take that bridge. Will you do it?"

A Pennsylvania soldier called out:

"Will you give us our whiskey, Colonel, if we make it?"

"Yes, by God!"

The two 51st's, New York on the left and Pennsylvania on the right,

..."charged up the road in column with fixed bayonets, and in scarcely more time than it takes to tell it the bridge was passed."

They got their whiskey.

(Notice the tree in the foreground.)

Edwin Forbes, Civial War combat artist, drew a small sycamore tree in his sketch.

"Today the same tree is a patriarch shading bridge and stream."