September 17th, 1862 Remembered

September 17th 1862 remains the single bloodiest day in American History.

Two Great Armies met at Sharpsburg Maryland one hundred and forty five years ago today to contest the right of states to leave the Union. A union created just some eighty years earlier. The north remembered this terrible battle by the name of the creek that flowed through the contested ground, Antietam. While in the south it was known as the Battle of Sharpsburg. Nearly twenty three thousand causalities were the result of this single day of fighting, all American. To put the causalities into perspective, this day totaled more than was suffered in the American Revolution, The War of 1812, The Mexican War, and the Spanish American War combined.

This photograph is of the historic Rohrbach's Bridge, forever known since that fateful day as Burnside’s Bridge. I captured this image one misty morning as the first rays of sunlight fell upon it.