Antietam/ Sharpsburg, where hallowed ground plaques abound
Sleepy old towns, living atop cemeteries
Let September Seventeenth, Eighteen Sixty Two resound!
Come Ferry down one of History’s estuaries
Union Johnny Raw waits near Dunker’s Church in fear
He knows old Stonewall and Robert E Lee are near
McClellan be a blind fool but he’s got ‘Lost Order’
And the boys at Harpers are buying them some lost time.
“Maryland, my Maryland,” he thinks he can hear (Confederates draw nearer).
In beat, the Potomac gently humming in rhyme
Over twenty thousand men dead, wounded or missing
After only a few hours of the clock ticking
Aftermath is devastation, yes… but also proclamation of emancipation
Non-intervention of other ‘great’ nations. A medical barrage:
The birth of the Angel of the Battlefield, the Red Cross and critical triage.
“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.”
Lt. Matthew J. Graham, Company H, 9th New York Volunteers
“Comrades with wounds of all conceivable shapes were brought in and placed side by side as thick as they could lay, and the bloody work of amputation commenced.”
Union soldier George Allen
Whispers of the Universe 