Vivid Description of Antietam Battlefield in The Days After

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From the National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. vividly described a trip over the Antietam battlefield in the days after the September 1862 fight:

"The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.

I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head.

In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod."

Holmes was searching for his son, an officer in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry who had been wounded at Antietam on September 17. The doctor turned writer documented his search for his wounded son in an article published in the December 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.

Read "My Hunt After the Captain" here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/12/my-hunt-after-the-captain/308750/
 
The 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was known as the Harvard Regiment because the officers were young graduates of the University. In addition to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who went on to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, another officer in the regiment was Paul Joseph Revere grandson and namesake of Paul Revere one of three grandsons of the celebrated silversmith and Revolutionary War hero who fought for the Union. He held the rank of Colonel at Gettysburg where he was mortally wounded on July 2nd and died two days later.
 
From the National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. vividly described a trip over the Antietam battlefield in the days after the September 1862 fight:

"The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.

I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head.

In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod."

Holmes was searching for his son, an officer in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry who had been wounded at Antietam on September 17. The doctor turned writer documented his search for his wounded son in an article published in the December 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.

Read "My Hunt After the Captain" here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1862/12/my-hunt-after-the-captain/308750/
Thanks for this
 
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