Bloody Lane

Antietam

Bloody Lane

A symbol of the Antietam battlefield, this sunken farm lane was so filled with bodies after four hours of fighting that, according to some accounts, you could walk the entire length without stepping on the ground.

CW1796

 

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Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Wilcox, commanding the 132nd Pennsylvania Infantry: “The men were supplied with 60 rounds of ammunition, and exhausted their supply, and took the cartridges from the dead and wounded, and kept up the fire against the enemy. . . .  When our men were nearly exhausted of strength and ammunition, you directed me to fix bayonets and charge upon the rifle-pits, but at this moment the Irish Brigade came up and joined our men in the charge. They drove the enemy from their stronghold and captured some 300 prisoners. . . .” -- from Wilcox’ battle report, in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series I, volume 19, part 1, page 331

Sergeant Charles Fuller of the 61st New York Infantry: “The dead and wounded were a horrible sight to behold. This sunken road, named by some writers ‘The Bloody Lane,’ was a good many rods long, and, for most of the way, there were enough dead and badly wounded to touch one another as they lay side by side. As we found them in some cases, they were two and three deep.  Perhaps a wounded man at the bottom, and a corpse or two piled over him. We at once took hold and straightened out matters the best we could--that is, we laid them so that they were only one deep, and we gave them drink from our canteens.” -- from Fuller’s memoirs Personal Recollections of the War of 1861, as quoted in Voices of the Civil War: Antietam, pages 113-114

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Fine Art Photography of Civil War Battlefields by Dan Jenkins