“When I think of the battle of Antietam, it seems so strange. Who permits it? To see or feel that a power is in existence that can and will hurl masses of men against each other in deadly conflict – slaying each other by the thousands, mangling and deforming their fellow men – is almost impossible. But it is so, and why, we cannot know.” – Dr. William Childs, surgeon, 5th New Hampshire Infantry, letter October 1862
The Bloody Lane, where thousands of bodies glutted the sunken roadbed.
And furthermore so strange, that I found my thoughts obsessed with the same questions, when walking around the quiet battlefield by dawnlight, before I laid eyes on the above words. Twenty-three thousand men fell in one day – more than the battle casualties of all the previous American wars combined. And now, like all battlefields, it just seems like a quiet, peaceful place, and the carnage that took place there both inconceivable and incomprehensible.
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