Download Showdown at Antietam: A Battlefield Tour of the Bloodiest Day in American History AudioBook Free
The Antietam is a large creek that works in regards to a mile east and south of the tiny hamlet of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Despite its attractive name, Antietam was a man-made disaster, its name signifying horror to the participants and to years of their own families. Some 6,400 People in america were killed or mortally wounded on that day, which is more than those killed in the Battle of 1812, the Mexican-American Battle, the Spanish-American Battle and everything the Indian wars, put together. At a time when the American inhabitants was a small percentage of what it is today, the fatalities at Antietam were more than double the number killed at the globe Trade Centre, and four times the number killed on D-Day. Then of course there were the wounded and maimed. About 15,000 of them. Many would later expire with their wounds, not counted as killed on the field. And an exceptional percentage of these wounded would go under the blade of the doctors, aptly called "saw-bones", on the kitchen table of a local farmer's house, and then laid in a few filthy straw in a dank barn, to either live or expire. For those that lived, usually teenagers, they could look forward to spending the rest with their lives hobbling around on the crude wooden crutch, or minus an arm or two, no longer capable of doing a man's work of this time. And particularly for the Southerners, don't depend too much on any federal assistance after the battle. While this battlefield tour must by requirement give attention to the "big picture" - the generals, the map arrows, the motions of divisions, brigades and regiments, etc. - I really do every once in awhile make an effort to include insights from the privates and corporals in the maelstrom, so that people remember that on the floor, down at the regiment, company and individual level, Antietam was not just lines on the map; it was a brutal deal with between flesh and blood vessels men who presumed so completely in their cause that these were quite prepared to wipe out or be killed.
