memoir · by a contemporary

The bivouac and the battlefield, or, Campaign sketches in Virginia and Maryland

George F. Noyes (1824–1868), 1863

Named on the page for Battle of Antietam.

machine-read Machine-read (OCR) from a scanned book at the Internet Archive: expect misread words and names. The scan itself is at the library.

draft Matched to the battle automatically; not yet reviewed.

Passages that name the battle; the whole book is at Internet Archive.

17 September 1862

Battle of Antietam

THE ANTIETAM BATTLE-FIELD.
THE ANTIETAM BATTLE-FIELD.

BATTLE OF ANTIETAM.
BATTLE OF ANTIETAM.

BATTLE OF ANTIETAM. 195
I was soon riding into the last night's camping- ground of our division, but the ashes of their camp- fires were cold. Troops were, however, massed in the fields beyond, and thither I hastened, to be again dis- appointed. Presuming that they must have advanced still farther to the front, I rode on to find other troops drawn up in line of battle, but these also were stran- gers to me, and no one could give me the desired in- formation. I was now on the battle-field of Antietam, and near the front of our centre.

BATTLE OF ANTIETAM. 209
But, look at it as I would, I could see no way in which the North could have avoided this war, and no doubts disturbed me as to her duty to fight it out fo the end. For her it was indeed no ordinary warfare, but a crusade for freedom ; the rehgious and patriotic element, the elements of self-denial, sacrifice, philan- thropy, had come in to elevate and sanctify what is in itself low and mean. I was satisfied, therefore, that, despite my contempt for war, I was in the right place on this Antietam battle-field; and while other thoughts and visions ran riot through my brain, sleep at length came, and another long day was over.

Public domain. Text from Internet Archive.