The Road to Antietam: Preserving Another Acre of America's Bloodiest Day

The Battle of Antietam was the first battle between field armies of the Civil War fought on Union soil, and it remains the bloodiest day of combat in American history: 22,727 dead, wounded or missing on both sides.

Lee comes north

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia crossed into Maryland on September 3, 1862, after the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30. Encouraged by success, Lee meant to carry the war into Union territory. Maryland was a border state: early in the war Confederate sympathisers had attacked Massachusetts and Pennsylvania militia passing through Baltimore, and Lincoln had travelled through the city in disguise on his way to his inauguration in March 1861. Confederate troops marched in singing "Maryland, My Maryland!" and expecting a warm welcome, but by the autumn of 1862 support for the Union was growing, especially in western Maryland.

September 17, 1862

At dawn, Union Major General Joseph Hooker attacked Lee's army in its defensive positions behind Antietam Creek. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller's Cornfield, and fighting went on around the Dunker Church. Major General Ambrose Burnside's troops took a stone bridge over the creek and pushed forward, until, at the critical moment, Confederate Major General A. P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry, counterattacked by surprise, drove Burnside back and ended the battle.

Protecting the land

With a Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, Washington County and the Save Historic Antietam Foundation will preserve nearly an acre beside the road to Harpers Ferry, ground that changed hands between Union and Confederate troops through that long, bloody day, now protected for good.

The grant programmes

Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants from the American Battlefield Protection Program help preservation partners across the country buy and protect threatened battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The programme also runs Preservation Planning Grants, open to any site of armed conflict on American soil, and Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation grants.

Sources

• National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program, "The Road to Antietam—Past, Present, & Future." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-road-to-antietam.htm
• A photograph from the property by the American Battlefield Trust is not reproduced here.