As you can see, the theme continues to be "it rained AGAIN today," or rather more to the point, it never ceased raining yesterday and it's still raining today. When I sloshed out to pack up the hoses and cords this morning I could see that the rig was slowly sinking into the soft, red mud of the campsite, and if we didn't leave fairly soon we might lose sight of it altogether.
Okay, enough about our sea voyage, let's talk about today's activities. We actually got our act on the road by 9:00 a.m. this morning, which is a first this whole week. We've been getting a little lazy I suppose and have been getting up closer to 7:30 than to 6:30, the time I like to be up and making coffee. But today we sprang into action and were able to hit the road early-ish toward our goal of being in Gettysbury by late afternoon.
To that end, we groped our way through the town of Front Royal in search of the proper highway north, and eventually stumbled onto Route 340. This we took until it intersected Interstate Route 66. Route 66 I recognized as running east/west and we jumped into a westbound lane until it intersected Interstate Route 81 going north, our target route of the day. Interstate 81 runs out of Virginia, crosses West Virginia and Maryland, then plunges into southern Pennsylvania.
I looked up on Wikipedia to find out how the village of Front Royal got its name. Included with less believable explanations was this one, which I consider more likely: "....in early decades of European settlement, the area was referred to in French as 'le front royal', meaning the British frontier. French settlers, trappers, and explorers in the Ohio Territory of the mid-18th century were referring to the land grant made by King Charles II, then in control of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron. In English, 'le front royal' is translated to the 'Royal Frontier'. The British themselves may have called the area 'Front Royal' after 1763, when they set the so-called Proclamation Line along the spine of the Alleghenies to demarcate the settled portion of the colonies from the Indian Reserve in the interior."
We didn't really have any plans for the day, especially since it continued to rain so hard. So, other than a quick stop at the Walmart in Martinsburg to watch THE SLOWEST humans we've ever seen try to perform their cash-register duties, we just motored north on Interstate 81. For entertainment we listened to our current book on CD, which discusses the lives of Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.
About lunchtime we were keeping an eye out for a likely spot to stop -- Concetta suggested a roadside rest -- when we came across one of the ubiquitous brown signs that informed us that the Civil War battleground of Antietam was just a short jaunt off the highway. Not wanting to pass up a great lunch site, we scooted up the ramp and were off into the soggy countryside in search of the year 1862.
Antietam is considered the bloodiest single day of the Civil War with 23,000 casualties, of which a combined total of 7,500 were killed. CivilWar.org tells us that: "The Army of the Potomac, under the command of George McClellan, mounted a series of powerful assaults against Robert E. Lee’s forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. The morning assault and vicious Confederate counterattacks swept back and forth through Miller’s Cornfield and the West Woods."
"Later, towards the center of the battlefield, Union assaults against the Sunken Road pierced the Confederate center after a terrible struggle. Late in the day, the third and final major assault by the Union army pushed over a bullet-strewn stone bridge at Antietam Creek. Just as the Federal forces began to collapse the Confederate right, the timely arrival of A.P. Hill’s division from Harpers Ferry helped to drive the Army of the Potomac back once more. The bloodiest single day in American military history ended in a draw, but the Confederate retreat gave Abraham Lincoln the 'victory' he desired before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation."
The museum at the site of the Antietam battle is a very nicely done. After lunch we braved the rain and dashed in to see what we could see. They have a very informative 23 minute film that gives you all the details of the conflict, expertly narrated by James Earl Jones. The museum proper is fairly small, but powerful. One of the things I found the most moving was a narrative by a Confederate soldier who came back to Antietam ten months later when General Lee sought to invade Pennsylvania and found many of his comrades had been left unburied on the battlefield. Note: Lee and his army were passing through Antietam on their way to a rendezvous with fate at the battle of Gettysburg.
There were lots of other human stories connected with the battle. Most of the townsfolk in Sharpsburg (only a mile away) had fled and were said to be hiding in caves. Many of the surrounding farms and fields were heavily damaged by the carnage. However, the only deliberate destruction of property during the battle was the burning of the Mumma farm. Confederate soldiers were ordered to burn the family's home to prevent its use by Union sharpshooters. Fortunately, Samuel Mumma and his family had fled to safety before the battle. The Mumma family rebuilt the home in 1863.
There was one artifact displayed that I found particularly chilling. With 7,500 killed, the need to bury the dead quickly and efficiently was of paramount importance. The men detailed to deal with the thousands of bodies are thought to have invented a device that they could use to grab and pull a body into a newly-dug grave (photo below right). If you don't recognize it, the implement is a bayonet with the tip bent into a useful hook shape. It certainly brought home to me the magnitude of the waste of life that had taken place so very near where I stood.
In 1862 Matthew Brady exhibited a series of photographs taken by Alexander Gardner and James Gibson immediately after the Battle of Antietam. Gardner and Gibson, two of the many photographers Brady hired to document the war, produced at least 95 images at Antietam. Their images were the first to show dead bodies on the field. For the first time the American public were themselves realizing the magnitude of loss of their friends, neighbors and loved ones.
I read a book that I purchased on our last trip called "This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War." In that book I learned for the first time that grieving parents and grandparents would often travel to the battlefields and wander the tortured ground looking for any sign of their missing son. Usually they would have with them testimony from one of their loved one's mess mates which detailed approximately where the wounded boy fell during the fight. The image of such anguish makes you cry.
After our visit to the Antietam National Park and Museum, we resumed our trek north on Interstate 81. When we reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, we hit the offramp for Route 30, the Lincoln Highway, and cruised the last 30 miles of the day toward Gettysburg. Our intent was not to visit the battlefield in Gettysburg as we did a pretty thorough job back in 2014. However, in 2014 we did miss the Eisenhower farm which is just southwest of Gettysburg. After that visit, we'll continue our run across Pennsylvania on the Lincoln Highway with an ultimate destination of Philadelphia.
Until then, we wish you Happy Travels.
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