It has been 6 years since that day, but the smell of body decay still hangs in the air. Nightmares stir in my head of the river running blood red, my chest pounding with the sound of constant canon fire, and the mountainous view covered with smoke and heaps of bodies. I'm not sure I will ever recover from that one, dreadful day.
The Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) took place on September 17, 1862 just 9 months before Gettysburg. With 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing, that one day is considered the bloodiest single-day battle in all of American history, including D-Day. It was the first battle to occur on Union soil, and Lee ended it by retreating. Early on Saturday morning, we jumped in the car and drove north for a tour of the battlefield.
After our tour and a quick bite to eat, we headed for the mountains for a hike on the Loudoun Heights Trail. We climbed to an overlook of Harpers Ferry, where John Brown in 1859 attempted to cause a slave revolt. The town sits where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac River.
