The Bloody Cornfield, Antietam 1862

A look at the Cornfield in Antietam, site of the largest of the many skirmishes that made up the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) in September 1862.

Please take a look at Video History Today http://www.videohistorytoday.com , the first web site to offer unique collections of re-usable original video clips designed for teachers and students.

The idea behind Video History Today is to give schools the raw material to make mini-documentaries and video essays on historical subjects.

Initial packages focus on World War I (Somme and Ieper areas), The Holocaust, the American Civil War and D-Day & Normandy 1944.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Antietam
• Sharpsburg
• Bloody
• Cornfield
• American
• Civil
• War
• General
• Robert
• Lee
• 1862
• Union
• Confederate

[ratricide]

Fully concur with GBJPhotoWorks - excellent vidoes, and the effort is much appreciated. Cheers

[VideoHistoryToday]

@ratricide Thanks for the compliments. I have a few more clips from my US trip in 2007 but have moved on to other things and kind of left them behind. May have to go over them again soon. . Plus I've just been back to France/Belgium again so have some newer stuff from WWI and WWII.

[GBJPhotoWorks]

Your videos are excellent. Thank you for posting them. As I watch this one, I have to admit being in this particular field brings me to tears. The violence that occurred in this one small field (about 30 acres) is almost unimaginable. In about 3 hrs. there were probably somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 dead and immobilized wounded on the ground in this one small space. For me, the horror of this place seems to have not diminished.

[VideoHistoryToday]

@GBJPhotoWorks Thanks for the compliments. I am British and in schools here, the big historical battle to compare with Antietam is the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916: over 55,000 casualties of which 20,000 dead or missing (22,000 and 6,000 at Antietam). Whilst the numbers were higher at the Somme, the battle at Antietam was over a relatively small area. Gettysburg may attract all the tourists but I loved Antietam. A beautiful place today and well worth a visit.

[Ihateworking1]

@VideoHistoryToday Those WW1 Casualty figures were really spooky, they give me the chills, Its a horror nothing was learned about frontal assaults from the 4 years of war here.

[chapdog82]

Famous Units that fought in the Cornfield..Hoods Texan's. 1st Texas in paricular. the Iron Brigade's 2nd and 6th Wisconsin (The 7th Wisc and 19th Ind Were to the right of it and the west woods). Battery B 4th US Artillery, and the 2nd Massachucets (Robert Gould Shaw's regiment..he would later lead the 54th Mass). Meades Pennsylvania Reserves have some notoriety as well. They helped the Iron Brigade Smash Hood's Division out of the Cornfield.

[StonewallJackson26]

The Cornfield was a Savage fight where lines of battle were mixed and hand to hand combat was common. The shear volume of Artillery fire that sprayed the Cornfield with shrapnel was murdering. One Federal soldier later reported, that when Hood's Texans advanced through the Cornfield they were being hit with canister fire, he saw a man's arm shoot what must have been 30 feet in the air.

What brave men those Texans were though. Hood's Texans suffered 82% casualties on Sept. 17.

[jillyjobjoe78]

My great great great grand father was a bucktail sergent in antietam and he was killed at blood lane