Foretelling the End of Slavery

Americans have an old saying, long attributed to film mogul Sam Goldwynn: "Don't worry about the War.  It's all over but the shooting."

I've heard it noted or suggested that the outcome of America's Civil War, or as southerners continue to call it, "The War Between the States", was determined on September 17, 1862 fairly much on the landscape pictured above.

General Robert E. Lee's army had crossed the Potomac River into Maryland at Sharpsburg, extended itself across South Mountain, in whose shadow I live, and east to Frederick for provisioning and recruits.  The provisioning turned out a matter of cash trade; the recruiting, although not entirely a flop--the skirmishing on the 17th may have been set off by a Baltimore unit aligned with the south--had not gone so well.  The civilian Yankee reception turned out chilly.

Lee's assembly on the east side of South Mountain had dropped a copy of the battle plans for Sharpsburg, and these picked up by the Army of the Potomac would seem to have helped its general, George B. McClellan, rise to the occasion, something he had been unable to bring himself and his units to do while bivouaced for months in Virginia's tidewater region.

There are many descriptions of the battle online, but all agree on the facts met at the end of the day: 23,000 casualties, a field truce for a sober evening spent cleaning up some and even conversing between opposed officers, and a morning that saw Lee's thoroughly whipped army left to retreat across the Potomac to fight another day.

That other day took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania over the summer of the following year from July 1 to 3, and it proved so disastrous in the end that Lee himself apologized personally to those beaten and retreating from the pivotal battle of Little Round Top.  His vanity and ego had far exceded his good sense, and he had knowingly sent his men--his General Pickett's men--up a hill against a better positioned and quite "canny" force--short on ammunition, a fair portion of Union soldiers had lain hidden and held their fire until last moments, which they then followed with ferocious hand-to-hand combat.

Foretold by the dismal day at Antietam and confirmed at Gettysburg, the real and truest end of the Battle of Gettysburg took place at the first reenactment of "Pickett's Charge", Lee's disastrous decision, in 1913:

Back in 1913, just fifty years after the momentous Battle of Gettysburg, 50,000 Confederate and Union veterans returned to camp together on the fields where they had once been locked in mortal combat. The highlight, however, was a reenactment of the infamous Pickett’s Charge, in which more than 3,000 men died in a matter of minutes. But this time, instead of meeting one another with bayonets and artillery fire, the old men threw down their weapons and embraced one another. . . . .

Source: http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/q-whats-so-heartwarming-about-the/

The documentary by Ken Burns, The Civil War, contains black and white photographs or footage of that moment.

There are few uncontested assertions in the 20/20 hindsight that follows in the wake of wars as they become historical artifact for scholars, but of this be certain: Antietam stands signal as a beginning of the end of the southern plantation-based and slaveholding artistocracy that stood with its money behind the shield of "Stats Rats".

States Rights.

A latterday General Grant reminded me that seccession meant assuming ownership of the national funds forwarded for the Louisiana Purchase, essentially an act of theft from even the then loosely related "American People."

I go out to Antietam now, as do many locals, for recreation.  Bikers, hikers, joggers, birdwatchers, and, of course, photographers and others use the park as an outdoor recreation resource, but I believe most remain aware and sensitive to its dead and to its larger meaning in the American psyche and to its message to the world. 

At Antietam, "Out of Many, One" (E Pluribus Unum) and " . . . that all men are created equal" found the seeds for their implementation and their reality.

The warriors, south and north, who had never seen this thing called "a country" had traveled from every corner of it for the one day of battle.

Their children today costume up, study the maps, the journals and come out annually to do it all over again.

I'm sure a park ranger had (or has by now) removed the flags put there by a visitor from (or friend of) the historic "69th Irish Brigade" shortly after my visit--that above is a detail from their monument at Antietam. Here is a related contemporary video from the same.

Source: YouTube poster "IrishJoe3". "Civil War Reenacting With the 69th Irish Brigade." Posted July 13, 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-JcCm2T1ZE

Look carefully, and you may see a multicultural Irish Brigade.

Out of Many, One.

This next photograph is mine, an interpretation of "Bloody Lane", an eroded and sunken farm road from which Confederate soldiers stood off the Union army until a position looking down the lane was obtained and the men firing from the ditch "infilladed".  The monument in the middle ground is that of the 132 Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

 

Reference

"Bloody Lane": http://www.88ny.net/Antietam_Bloody_Lane.htm

Wikipedia

"Battle of Antietam": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam

"Battle of Gettysburg": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg

"Little Round Top": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Little_Round_Top

"Pickett's Charge": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett's_Charge

# # #