Visiting Antietam is always an emotional experience for me. I get a very distinct sense that there are some soldiers from the battle still on and around the fields ..... and I’m not into ghosts, etc. Rather than being ‘scary’, I feel a very deep sense of reverence. It’s happened every time I’ve been there.
I got the same feeling at Gettysberg.
Me too, Miss Magnolia. My great-grandfather was there with the Union 12th Corps in the Cornfield. Although I have walked the battlefield, and am an Army veteran myself,(Cold War in Europe; pre Viet Nam), I know I have only the vaguest understanding of what that terrible day must have been like. For a while I had a letter he had written to his wife a few days after the battle (I have since donated it to a museum). Describing the march to the battle, and then the battle itself, he wrote:
"To the unitiated the night march would have been impressive in the extreme - the steady solumn tread of ten thousand men, the whispering orders of the officers - the frequent halts and silent advance of one or two to examine the character of the ground ahead - the occasional fire of some miserable straggler and so forth & all tending to make men prepare their minds for something awful upon the break of day. Doubtless many who are now in Eternity had thoughts that night they never entertained before..."
And on The Cornfield itself; "I cannot possibly detail to you now the trials of that day. Suffice it to say that the "iron hail" was so thick and my duties took me to so many different points, nothing but the protecting care of my God can have saved me from injury."
I know what you mean. Standing in “Bloody Lane” gives me chills. I have to imagine that the terror of final minutes of their lives, caused a little piece of the spirit to remain on that battlefield in some way.
My great-great grandfather lost two fingers at Manassas and was allowed to go home to Strausburg Va to recover. He just missed Antietam but went back to his brigade to serve again at Gettysburg.
I have the exact same feelings. It’s the most humbling place I’ve ever been.