Antietam burial map, part 2: Do we still walk on the dead?

On the lawn between the Dunker Church and the visitors’ center at Antietam National Battlefield stand a cannon and limbers representing the Confederate artillery deployed in this area during the September 17, 1862 battle of Antietam. (Brian F. Swartz Photo)

After studying the Antietam burial map, you can never again walk the Antietam battlefield without wondering if you’re stepping on somebody.

For example, many people checking out the visitors’ center (undergoing renovations) walk down the grassy lawn (or along the paved path) and cross the Dunker Church Road to visit the Dunker Church. Some people follow the Antietam Remembered Trail leading to the nearby Maryland Monument, and the church lies a short side trip along the way.

Dead Confederates are laid out for burial across the Hagerstown Pike from the Dunker Church. The camera angle places this scene a short distance north beyond the artillery shown in the top photo. (Library of Congress)

Except for the representative artillery and limbers and quaint, white-painted Dunker Church, nothing warlike mars the landscape.

But this area was a charnel house during and after the battle. Union artillery tore up Confederate batteries, and afterwards Union soldiers laid out dead Confederates for burial. A famous photograph shows dead Confederates laid out with the church in the background.

When the burying ended, Confederates filled the ground between the Dunker Church and where the artillery display stands near the modern visitors’ center. The Antietam burial map clearly shows that this area was a decent-sized cemetery.

And the next time I walk from the visitors’ center to the Dunker Church, I will wonder, “Did they dig up everybody?”

At least five rows of dead Confederates were buried across the Hagerstown Pike from the Dunker Church, according to the Antietam burial map. The red circle marks the approximate site of the modern visitors’ center at Antietam National Battlefield. People walking to the church from the visitors’ center cross terrain once filled with Confederate graves. The quotation-mark symbols identify where dead horses were located. (New York Public Library)

 Then there’s the 24-acre cornfield, forever known as the Bloody Cornfield, through which Yanks and Rebs surged while eviscerating the other guy’s ranks. Massive volleys almost wiped out entire regiments, and sometimes lying two or three bodies deep, the dead, dying, and wounded covered the broken cornstalks.

A National Park Service trail skirts the southern edge of the Bloody Cornfield at Antietam. Hundreds of soldiers were buried in this immediate area after the September 17, 1862 battle. (BFS)

Accessible from Cornfield Avenue (a park road), the Bloody Cornfield Trail skirts the cornfield on its south and east sides before reaching the Poffenberger Farm to the north. The best time of year to experience the cornfield as the solders saw it is from late August to harvest.

A metal sign identifies the Bloody Cornfield (background) at Antietam National Battlefield. The Antietam burial map indicates the cornfield was filled with graves after the battle. (BFS)

With cornstalks to one side and fields and woods to the other, visitors enjoy nature’s beauty and peace. Peace reigns in this bucolic part of Washington County.

But graves once filled the cornfield, and the Cornfield Trail crosses several burial sites for Union and Confederate soldiers. In January 2009, a hiker cutting across the harvested cornfield found bone fragments and “a metal button, clotted with red clay,” near a groundhog’s hole.

National Park Service officials recovered additional bone fragments, including a jaw, and a belt buckle.

Somewhere between ages 19 and 21, the soldier belonged to a New York regiment, based on the belt buckle and buttons. He was later reburied in New York.

So if one soldier still lay buried in the Cornfield in 2009, could others remain today beneath the cornfield and its adjacent trail?

The red dot marks approximately where the Bloody Cornfield sign (above) stands on the Antietam battlefield. The large number of graves marked above the dot are where dead soldiers were buried in the cornfield after the battle. (New York Public Library)

And finally there’s the Bloody Lane. Visitors usually walk the farm lane without venturing “up” the Bloody Lane Trail, which ascends the slight hill rising to the northeast. Union soldiers came down this same slope totheir Confederate-lead obliteration on September 17, 1862.

The red dot marks where the observation tower stands on the Blood Lane at Antietam. Identified by hash marks, Confederate graves extended from the tower’s future site to the lane’s curve on the left. (New York Public Library)

After the battle of Antietam, Confederates killed at the Bloody Lane were buried in mass graves located just to the right of the visible wood fence. The graves extended from the foreground to where the fence disappears at upper left. (BFS)

Shortly after 5 p.m. that day, the 7th Maine Infantry’s Maj. Thomas Hyde urged his nervous horse to step across Confederates piled three or four men deep in the Bloody Lane. That was a lot of men.

The Bloody Lane observation tower offers visitors excellent views of the Antietam battlefield and South Mountain to the east. (BFS)

The Antietam burial map reveals that after the battle, Union soldiers carried or dragged almost all the dead Confederates upslope from the lane and buried them in three mass graves. The end graves lay parallel to the Bloody Lane, the middle grave perpendicular to it.

Dead Union boys were buried in long rows farther away.

The Bloody Lane section familiar to Antietam visitors stretches between two curves in the original farm road. Along this section, which is partially bordered by a farm fence, Confederate graves filled the adjacent slope.

Climb the adjacent observation tower and look down at the Bloody Lane. The ad hoc Confederate cemetery started very close to the farm fence on the right and extended upslope from there.

The next time you look west from the observation tower or walk the Bloody Angle Trail, ask yourself, “Are any graves still left here?”

The Antietam burial map does not tell us that.

A downloadable copy of the map is available here.

Sources: “Union soldier’s bones found at Antietam,” Associated Press, Frederick News-Post, January 9, 2009, updated March 11, 2016; Antietam burial map, drawn by Simon G. Elliott, New York Public Library

Next week: We meet Asa Reed, the Maine name on the Antietam burial map.


If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to like Maine at War on Facebook and get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. —————————————————————————————————————–

Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.