Antietam: The Scavenger Hunt Continues

Saturday, 17 March

Continuing with the story of our outing to the site of the Bloodiest One-Day Battle in American History, which I began in this post …

First, a quick step back in our personal history to show you some of the fields on which the battle played out nearly 150 years ago.  These photos are from 1993; our first trip to Antietam.  There was too much heat-haze today to replicate them, so we opted not to take any landscape images this time.

Cornfields and farmlands were the scene of the one-day battle.

And now, on with the rest of the scavenger hunt.

5.  Which monument on the Antietam Battlefield features a red cross?  Why do you think this is?

General knowledge provided this answer before we started the auto-tour.  Later, we stumbled upon the monument to Clara Barton, who organized the American Red Cross in 1881, at tour stop #2 — the J. Poffenberger Farm in the North Woods area.

This monument to Clara Barton is one of the few dedicated to an individual at Antietam.
It was erected in tribute to her work, bringing supplies and nursing aid to the
wounded on the battlefield.  The symbolic red cross on the pedestal was made from a
brick from the chimney of the house where she was born.

6.  This Confederate General was a native Virginian.  He graduated from West Point in 1842, served with distinction in the Mexican War, and was then a professor at the Virginia Military Institute.  At Antietam, he commanded the Confederate soldiers on the north end of the battlefield.  He is best remembered by his nickname “Stonewall.”

Way too easy — this one’s for you, Judy: Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.  He earned the nickname at the Battle of First Manassas when General Bee rallied his men by proclaiming: “Look!  There’s Jackson standing like a stonewall!  Rally behind the Virginians.”

7.  Six generals were either killed or mortally wounded at the Battle of Antietam.  The location where each fell is marked by a mortuary cannon, an upside-down cannon barrel mounted in stone.  Can you name the generals who lost their lives at Antietam and find all six mortuary cannons?

We cheated on this one because we didn’t have time to look for all six mortuary cannons, but we knew where to find at least two thanks to recently scanned photos from our 1993 trip.  As for the names — well, they were listed on the monuments map we had downloaded from the NPS website: Anderson, Branch, Starke (Confederate); and Mansfield, Richardson, and Rodman (Union).  (Names bolded are the ones we tallied up on our scavenger hunt.)

What I found interesting was that the battle was “equal-opportunity” when it came to the wounding/killing of high-ranking officers.  From the NPS website:

Six Brigadier and Major Generals were killed or mortally wounded during the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862.  Of the six fallen men, three were from the Union army and three were Confederates. ...

Incredibly, twelve generals were wounded during the battle – six from each side.  Two other generals were killed at the Battle of South Mountain, three days earlier – one Union and one Confederate.  Total for the two battles was 20 Generals killed or wounded – 10 from each side.

A lot has changed from 1993 to 2012, but the pose remains nearly identical.
Union General Richardson was wounded by artillery at Sunken Road; he died in November.

8.  At Antietam, the rolling terrain was of benefit to the cannoneers of both armies.  Over 500 cannons were used by the two armies.  Placing their guns on high ground, blue and gray alike were able to effectively strike enemy troop positions at great distances.  The bugler of Battery B, 4th US Artillery received the Medal of Honor for his distinguished service at the Battle of Antietam.  The location of his battery is marked by two cannons along Hagerstown Turnpike, just west of the Cornfield.  What was his name?  How old was he during the battle?

We found the two cannons where the battery was located and carefully read the nearby signage to no avail.  So, I had to look this up on the NPS website.  The answer: John Cook; he was 15 years old and acted as a cannoneer under severe fire.

9. This monument is the tallest on Antietam National Battlefield and it was dedicated on September 17, 1896.  (Hint: it’s located at Auto Tour Stop 5.)

The hint gave the answer away as the Philadelphia Brigade Monument.  (Bonus point: nearby, we found our third mortuary cannon; this one in honor of General Starke.)

Dedicated in 1896, the 73-foot (22 m) tall Philadelphia Brigade Monument is described as: "pointing to the heavens over the West Woods where 2,200 Union soldiers fell dead or wounded on the Antietam battlefield during the morning of Sept. 17, 1862.”

10.  The big white house and barn you see at Auto Tour Stop 6 is the Mumma Farmstead.  What happened to the Mumma property during the battle.

Nearby signage gave us the answer: it was burned down by Confederate soldiers who feared its use by Union sharpshooters.  The farm was the only property that was deliberately destroyed during the battle.  Even though the Federal government later reimbursed property owners for any destruction by Union soldiers, the Mummas received no compensation since their farm was burned by the Confederates.

The only building at the Mumma farm to survive the fire was the stone springhouse (right).

11.  This Confederate colonel fought with his regiment in the Sunken Road.  He survived wounds at Antietam, was eventually promoted to Major General, and fought for the Confederacy for the rest of the war.  After the conflict, he was Governor of Georgia and a US Senator.

We would have missed this one had we not picked up on the clue of “Sunken Road.”  Reading the markers near the observation tower, we got the answer: Colonel John Gordon.

12.  The monument at the base of the observation tower honors which famous Union brigade?  Can you identify all four regiments that fought with this unit?

Key to finding answers to the questions was reading them ahead of time to figure out where the information might be; otherwise, backtracking would have been in order.  Mui found the answer to this one while he was waiting for me to climb back down from the Observation Tower that was built by the War Department at the end of Bloody Lane; it was part of early efforts to create an open-air classroom at Antietam.  (As an aside — I don’t think the lessons taught in that classroom were learned well.)

The Monument in question was erected in tribute to the Union Brigade, made up of the 69th New York, 88th New York, 63rd New York, and 29th Massachusetts … all infantry.

The panel embedded in the Irish Brigade Monument depicts the 69th New York Color
Guard as it charges Confederate troops at Bloody Lane.

13.  The 23rd Ohio Regiment has been nicknamed the President’s Regiment.  Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes commanded the regiment until he was wounded at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14, 1862.  Hayes later became the 19th President of the United States.  Which other future president served in the 23rd Ohio?  Hint: There is a tall monument to him near Auto Stop 9: the Burnside Bridge.

We saw the William McKinley Monument on our stroll down the paved path to Burnside Bridge.  The inscription read: ”Sergeant McKinley, while in charge of the Commissary Department, on the afternoon of the day of the Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, personally and without orders served “hot coffee” and “warm food” to every man in the Regiment, on this spot and in doing so had to pass under fire.”

No photos of the monument, but I did take a couple of the bridge, which was another site of fierce fighting.  (The two soldiers in the top left corner of the collage below are Civil War re-enactors representing Confederate Virginians.  We asked them about the flag they were carrying as we’d not seen it before.  They explained that this is the little-known first design of the Confederate flag.)

Known as Rohrbach Bridge before the battle, the bridge that spans Antietam Creek was
referred to as the Lower Bridge by the armies.  Following the battle, it was renamed
after General Burnside, who commanded the Union soldiers that fought to cross it.

The last question of the scavenger hunt took us to the final resting place of many of the Union soldiers who fought at Antietam and other Civil War battlefields.  I found it odd to read that there were no Confederates buried in Antietam National Cemetery, which is located on a hill that was once occupied by Confederate artillery.  A bit of research on the NPS website revealed that the burial site was established by the State of Maryland in 1865.  The original plan was to indeed bury here the men from either side who had lost their lives during the Maryland campaign.  However, continued bitterness following the conflict, and the South’s inability to raise funds to join in the venture, persuaded Maryland to recant.

14.  The Private Soldier Monument stands in the center of Antietam National Cemetery.  It reaches skyward 44 feet 7 inches, weighs 250 tons and is made up of twenty seven pieces.  The soldier, made of two pieces joined at the waist, depicts a Union infantryman standing “in place rest” facing homeward to the north.  The monument was dedicated on September 17, 1880.  What is the motto written on the monument?

The answer: ”Not for themselves, but for their country.”

A bit of trivia to lighten the mood … the Private Soldier Monument first stood at the gateway of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  Later, it was dismantled for transport to its current site at the cemetery.  En route, the top half of “Old Simon,” as the statue is locally known, took a ‘dunking’ in the river at Washington, DC.  It took a while to retrieve it and continue the transport to Sharpsburg where all 27 pieces of the monument were reassembled.

Around the perimeter of the Private Soldier Monument are iron tablets inscribed with
stanzas from the Theodore O’Hara elegiac poem, Bivouac of the Dead.  The words, which
could have easily been written for the Civil War, were actually the poet’s tribute to
his fellow veterans from the Mexican American War.

And that wraps up the scavenger hunt.  I thought it was a good way to ferret out information about the battlefield and further our Civil War education.  Didn’t see anyone else participating, though.

So, all that vicious fighting ended how?  Some historians say it was a draw.  With Lee crossing back across the Potomac during the night following the battle, at best it was a strategic victory for the Union.  And the price paid for this inconclusive result: 26,134 casualties per one website.  That number includes not just the dead and wounded, but the missing and captured as well.  Such a mind boggling number!

In the previous post, I wondered what drives mankind to fight so viciously.  A friend left a comment about people fighting when they put agenda above relationship.  The bigger the stakes, the more vicious the fight.  She’s right, of course.  Not that I understand it, mind you.  It seems to me that by using common sense we should be able to strike a balance in all things without such devastating results.  Oh wait, I forget … not everyone knows how to use their common sense. 

Yes, I realize that is an overly simplistic way of looking at things, but my brain is on overload, so I’ll end on that note.  The weather forecast for the next weekend isn’t looking good, but should that change between now and then, we’ll be doing something quite different from what we did today.  We need to give our senses time to heal before we tackle another Civil War site, of which there are way too many in this area.

By the way … lest you think our day was wildlife-less …

A ground hog pops up from his burrow to check us out!

If you’d like to see more pictures from our trip to Antietam, including larger sizes of the ones I used in the collages, click here to visit my online gallery.