Landscape Turned Red, The Battle of Antietam

I just finished, "Landscape Turned Red, The Battle of Antietam" by Stephen W. Sears. I'm usually not a big reader of historical books but I became interested in Antietam when a friend and I were talking about what the most deadly battle in the Civil War was. The battle at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg , Maryland was not only the worst of the Civil War, but the worst of any battle in our history. The fighting and losses in this one battle were horrific. From just after dawn on Wednesday morning September 17, 1862 to just around three o'clock that afternoon over 18,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing on both sides. For the day the best estimates are 22,719.
Before the battle ordinary landscape features and places having significence only to locals for generations became places of legend and undoubtedly lived in the minds of the survivors forever with the horror, heroism and melancholy of that day; "the East Woods", "the West Woods", "the Cornfield", "the sunken road", the Dunker Church". The violent battle was so intense and sustained a veteran recalled that, for a moment in his mind's eye the landscape around him turned red.

"We are having a terrible battle, it commenced at daylight this morning and has been raging furiously all day. All other battles in this country are merely skirmishes compared to it."
--Soldier at General George B. McClellan's headquarters

The book is excellent in the build up to the battle and the mindset of not only the Generals and soldiers involved but others as well, Abraham Lincoln, who spent much of his time trying to get General McClellan to actually use his army, and other politicians and civilians of the day.
While reading you'll wander if you could do what these men did. Often masses of soldiers standing only yards from each other firing, loading, and firing again, and screaming. Then Bayonets, clubbing with rifles, and at the end bloody hand to hand combat. Overall the horrific din of artillary firing overhead and explosions.

"More Yankees crowded forward over the dead and wounded of their first line to return the volley, and the two battle lines, disdaining cover , stood 250 yards apart in plain sight of each other and blazed away, loading and firing with feverish haste. Shouted commands went unheard in the din, and ragged sheets of dirty white smoke hung low in the windless air over the pasture and in the corn. Finally, as if by mutual consent, the two lines could take it no longer and lay down behind whatever cover they could find and continued the fight."
--the cornfield

"The fire now became fearful and incessant, merged into a tumultuous chorus that made the earth tremble. The discharge of musketry sounded upon the ear like the rolling of a thousand distant drums."
--war correspondent Felix de Fontaine

"..There were a few moments of savage hand-to-hand combat among the trampled cornstalks, with men swinging clubbed muskets and stabbing at each other with bayonets...Private B.H. Witcher of the 6th Georgia urged a comrade to stand fast with him, pointing to the neatly aligned ranks still lying to their right and left. They're all dead men his companion yelled at him, and to prove it he fired a shot into a man on the ground a few yards away; the body did not twitch.."
--the cornfield

"..In this road there lay so many dead rebels that they formed a line which one might walked upon as far as I could see, they lay just as thay had been killed apparently, amid the blood which was soaking the earth."
--Lt. Livermore of the 5th New Hampshire, the sunken road

If you like history and especially if you like the early America of the civil war era you'll probably like the book. I'll give it a 3-1/2 on my 5 scale. It gives a view into the lives of the time, not just the armies, but the people, and even the political intrigues. The battle gave the North (despite great losses) a strategic victory and allowed Abraham Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.

If there really are places that could be deemed haunted Antietam would surely be such a place;
"The queerest thing about it, a man remembered, was the quiet the battle had inflicted. There was no roosters left to crow, and hardly any dogs to bark, and the birds did not return until the next spring. When night come I was so lonesome that I see I didn't know what lonesome was before. It was a curious silent world.."
--Landscape Turned Red

The "Cornfield" today, evening;
"..To the west, the horizon is splashed with pink. To the south, a half moon hangs in a sky turning a darker shade of blue. There is no breeze at all, and the grass in the Cornfield is perfectly still...The sky darkens... Far away, a train blows its whistle, then blows it again, then again. The whistle fades as the train moves on. Now the only sound is the chirp of a million crickets. A faint breeze rises. The grass quivers, then sways gently. It's night now, and the Cornfield -- the bloodiest part of the bloodiest day in American history -- is as peaceful as any place on Earth."
--From, "And The Slain Lay in Rows", Peter Carlson(The Washington Post)