SACRILEGE ON SUNKEN ROAD

Several years ago, my wife and I decided to take what we now refer to as our “Civil War Vacation.” During the course of about 10 days, Jean and I visited numerous well-known battlefields of the afore-mentioned war.

Manassas

Fredericksburg

Cold Harbor

Richmond

The Crater

Gettysburg

Antietam 

Speaking of Antietam, more Union and Confederate soldiers were killed and wounded on this battlefield in one day (September 17, 1862) than on any other day of the entire war. 

The ‘Sunken Road,’ (later referred to as ‘Bloody Lane,’) was situated between two farms, and it was here that Gen. George McClellan’s Yankees and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Rebels collided in a manner unprecedented in the war. 

General Lee ordered Confederate troops to hold their ground at the Sunken Road, while soldiers on both sides fired almost point blank into the living and dead. Ultimately, the Union Blue overwhelmed the Confederate Gray. When the four hour battle subsided the Sunken Road was haphazardly stacked with the bodies of the dead and dying.

I cannot begin to tell you how, but while my wife and I were at Antietam National Battlefield we somehow managed to do something all visitors to this sacred site are prohibited from doing.

We drove down Bloody Lane

To be sure, as soon as we realized we were where we were I found the nearest place to turn around; lest the living (or the dead) render vengeance upon us. (While one visitor to the battlefield saw several men in Confederate uniforms walking Bloody Lane, and thought they were reenactors until they vanished, I admit I was slightly more concerned with the presence of park rangers). 

It occurs to me that our vehicle may have caused the Sunken Road to erode a few millimeters deeper than it was before our vehicular sacrilege. And speaking of ghosts, I can only wonder what the valiant soldiers of the Blue and the Gray might have thought of our great ‘iron horse,’ as it lumbered along the road where they so unceremoniously fell, and where the earth received their blood; a conveyance which, at the time, any semblance thereof was still decades from wrapping itself in reality. 

They say confession is good for the soul. 

If this is true, (and I believe it is) I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the living and the dead for my unintended transgression of such hallowed ground as this.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 48. Copyright pending

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