September 17, 1862

(Battle of Antietam, Sharpsburg, Maryland, September 17, 1862; 2,100 Union dead, 1550 Confederate dead) the day September seventeenth in eighteen sixty-two found stalks of corn in Maryland grown high as horses' heads while rebel soldiers clad in gray, invaders to this place, stood vigil in dawn's wispy mists as quiet Sharpsburg slept when from the creek Antietam charged boldly Stars-and-Stripes so all-day-through fierce battle raged in pasture, corn, and road till sunset quelled the violence, loud cannon-thunder ebbed, replaced by floods of helpless moans from maimed and wounded men while from the carnage rebels skulked across Potomac's flow to breathe their safe Virginia air as blue-clad victors wept and set about the burials of dead, both gray and blue, three-thousand plus six hundred more American souls lost that day, September seventeenth, in eighteen sixty-two.