continuing the trip out east

Continuing on, the next day we went to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. The highlight is the waterfall, quite pretty. There are also some scenic overlooks into the canyon. However, I think as far as we were concerned, we saw prettier scenery just driving along. WV is truly a beautiful state, with great biking roads.


The next morning we visited Antietam National Battlefield. Now, I will display some ignorance as to American history. I knew Antietam was important in the Civil War, but I didn't know why. So that was why I wanted to stop so much - to try to understand the war and the times and the people better.

I was truly amazed at how huge Antietam is. Because most of the fighting during the Civil War was hand-to-hand combat, I didn't think one battlefield would be so large. And even more amazing was the number of deaths from one day of fighting here. The film they show in the museum/shop area is a bit hokey, but it really points out some facts that I'm guessing a lot of folks either don't know or forgot. The one that really sticks out in my memory - after the win at Antietam, Abe Lincoln wanted the Union soldiers to go after the Confederates, but the commander in charge didn't do so. The war continued for a couple years after this - could these years of bloodshed have been avoided?

These pictures show: an overview of a small part of the battlefield (the ditch along the left was an area of many deaths), an enlarged copy of a photo taken before the bodies were removed, a photo from very near that same spot, with the church still in the background, and the bridge where many Union soldiers died, trying to cross.

Visiting the battlefield was very thought-provoking to me. I wonder, as I had previously, how soldiers of that time could fight "like gentlemen" - march in a line while being shot at, not trying to avoid getting shot, just continuing onward. Where is the instinct for self-preservation? And how stupid (in my mind) to fight that way - what a waste of humans. Of course I also think of the horrific wounds and almost non-existent medical knowledge. And I think about families, torn in two, with some family members on each side of the war... and some families were never able to reconcile afterwards, each side thinking the other a traitor.