Peace, Annihilated

Post by Ed Galloway

Debbie mentioned previously that we visited the Antietam battlefield on our way to pick Mary up from school.  The battlefield site is rich and gently rolling farmland surrounded by the low green mountains of Western Maryland, one of the prettiest places anywhere.

Today this quiet place echoes with what happened there nearly 150 years ago.  In an area not too much bigger than our little place in Shelby County, on a warm September morning, two armies met –- 120,000 men -- determined to destroy each other.

At daylight, boys like our own loaded their muskets, fixed their bayonets, strapped on their packs and at someone’s order, stood up and walked into hell.  In a few short hours 12,000 of them were dead.  From their defensive positions like the sunken road, Confederates mowed down the Union soldiers.  When the defenses were at last overwhelmed by the Federals’ numbers, it was the Confederates’ turn to be destroyed.  Survivors talked about dead lying in rows and stacked like cord wood.

I think of that now in our peaceful little place where in the morning the loudest sounds are the birds.  It must have been like that at Antietam Creek before the soldiers got there, before peace was annihilated by madness. 

No doubt it will happen again and again. 

And so it goes.