On September 17, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed for more than twelve hours around the small village of Sharpsburg, Maryland along the Antietam Creek in what became the bloodiest single day in American military history. Every casualty was an American!
The senior missionaries of The Maryland Baltimore Mission traveled to Sharpsburg, Maryland last Saturday, to witness the 23rd Annual Antietam National Battlefield Memorial Illumination, an event that draws thousands of visitors each year on the first Saturday in December. In the late afternoon, we first went to the National Cemetery, which is located on the north edge of the town, where row upon row of white marble stones mark the final resting place for thousands of soldiers who died in this Civil War battle.
The senior missionaries of The Maryland Baltimore Mission traveled to Sharpsburg, Maryland last Saturday, to witness the 23rd Annual Antietam National Battlefield Memorial Illumination, an event that draws thousands of visitors each year on the first Saturday in December. In the late afternoon, we first went to the National Cemetery, which is located on the north edge of the town, where row upon row of white marble stones mark the final resting place for thousands of soldiers who died in this Civil War battle.
Antietam National Cemetery
Exiting the cemetery about 4:30, the shadows of evening were already beginning to gather and silently spread across the battlefield. We traveled the short distance to where a line of automobiles was already forming for the illumination event, which wasn't scheduled to start for another hour and a half. We found our place in line just east of Antietam Creek seven-tenths of a mile behind the lead car. Within 15 minutes of our arrival, the line of vehicles had quickly extended behind us until we could no longer see the last car beyond the next curve in the road about a quarter of a mile away.
A few minutes past six o'clock the long procession began to inch along the road in the dark through the military park. In every direction across the fields of battle, there were lighted candles in weighted brown paper sacks. Each of the 23,110 luminaries encountered along the driving tour represented a Union or Confederate solder killed, wounded, or missing during that fateful day nearly a century and a half ago.
Luminaries at Antietam Battlefield
(photo by Bob Carney)
It was an impressive yet solemn occasion as we and thousands of other people passed slowly through five miles of the Antietam Battlefield after dark under a star lit sky with a half moon overhead. If you have never been there yourself, it is difficult to describe what our eyes actually saw and the feelings that stirred within us as we passed over this hallowed ground. For me, personally, it didn't seem as if I was looking at candlelit bags in neat rows across the fields. Instead, I was "seeing" thousands of brave individuals who had given the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, so we and other generations of Americans could enjoy the freedoms of today. And for each soldier who was a casualty here, there were fathers, mothers, siblings, wives, and children who suffered the loss of their loved ones as a result of this terrible conflict.
Each succeeding generation must learn for itself that freedom is not free.
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