THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ANTIETAM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1613, 14 February 1866, Page 3

THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ANTIETAM.

(From the Times Correspondent.) The famous battle-ground of Antietam,in which fully 20,000 Southern soldiers fell, and more than that number of Federals, is a succession of hills and ravines, and is belted in with a range of mountains, now clad in rich autumn foliage. The road to it from Harper's Ferry lies over the Maryland Heights; as rough a road as a man not particular on such matters need wish to travel. When the Confederate army was defeated in the battle of South Mountain, in 1862, they fell back towards the Potomac, and finally drew up in line of battle on this disastrous field of Antietam. M'Clellan's line opposing them extended over five miles in length, and every step of his advance was contested with the stubbornness and gallantry which distinguished the Confederate armies through every stage of the war. M'Clellan had 100,000 men under his command ; General Lee had probably about half that number, and the reinforcements which Stonewall Jackson brought up before the battle were not sufficient to place him on an equality with his antagonist. The fields are now ploughed over, and crops have been reaped off them—crops enriched by the blood of the thousands who fell on these fatal hills and in the hollows. But, although three years have elapsed since the battle was fought, there are many parts of the ground which still present melancholy traces of the desperate struggle,, The small stream called the Antietam runs through the valley a bridge across it being the scene of one of the most terrible fights which took place in all that terrible war. After the Confederates had been driven back a mile or a mile and a half, a portion of them massed in front of this bridge, with the Potomac at their backs. Upon the hill which faces the bridge the Southern troops were posted in dense numbers, and the fields round about are torn up with grape and shell which played upon them from the federal centres. Three times Burnside charged the bridge, and each time he was repulsed with fearful loss. He sent to M'Clellan for reinforcements, but received word back that no aid could be sent to him, and that he must take the bridge. The Confederates were being mown down by hundreds but still thefight might have not gone against them had they not ran out of ammunition. "Then," said a gentleman who saw the battle," they fired away their ramrods at the enemy, and even- after that stood and took things out of their pockets and threw them at the advancing host." But knives and tobacco boxes could ill reply to grape and canister, and step by step they were forced back, until they reached an orchard where they fell so thickly that men of the village walked next day over the dead bodies without touching the ground with their feet. In that orchard 1 saw the mounds beneath which hundreds of the sons of the South were huddled together after the battle, and one grave alone, beneath an apple tree, has a small wooden board at the head, denoting that a soldier from New Orleans was buried there. In front of the bridge where they had fought so long, if the dead leaves are stirred with a stick, heaps of rotting havresacks, boots, socks, and other relics of the struggle are turned up. A farmer who has spent his days since the battle in making himself familiar with the ground told me that the grain grows in these fields so ripe that it " turns over and falls down." Where bodies lie beneath the corn grows in fruitful patches ; "it comes up to the exact shape of the grave," said the farmer, in his homely way, "so that to look over the field is like looking down on a map with all the graves marked down on it." Another fatal spot is now called by the farmers roundabout, " Bloody-lane." It is simply a lane between two farms, where the Confederates came up from a hill, not suspecting the presence of the enemy, and fell straight into their hands. The fields on each side are big with the graves of the Carolinians and Virginians who perished there. They were laid in deep trenches so thickly that the farmer whose land this is states that at least 8,000 Southern soldiers lie beneath the soil. The lane is still covered with broken knapsacks, boots, and pieces of leather, and cartloads of bullets have been carried off the ground by the villagers. Then a little further to the left is a corn-field where Hooker's division met aqd repulsed a part of Jackson's brigade after a most bloody struggle. Hooker himself was wounded close by; Gen. Mansfield was killed, and as to the Southern dead no record seems to have been kept of them. "By that tree," said the farmer, named Aaron Goode, who went over the field the second day after the battle, " I saw a Confederate colonel lying dead, and he was buried underneath." These nameless graves were all the reward that the ill-fated wanderers from the South reaped from their expedition. The survivors recrossed the Potomac that night, and the road to the Virginia valley is bordered with their graves. The little town of Sharpsburg is close by the field,and the fugitives fought their way through it to gain the river which led to their homes. The streets were strewn with the dead and dying that night, and the hot pursuit of the Federals obliged the Confederates to leave their wounded in the hands of the conqueror, by whom they were carefully tended. A woman in the village, whost* house is well dinted with shot and shell, seeing me looking at these marks of the retreat, came to me and said in a listless drawl that she saw sights there which she never wished to see again. Two dead "rebs" lay foreninst her house, and all the streets were covered with them. The Yankees drove them to the river, and then, though her husband was in the main army, they drove her out of her house, with her five children, and she never saw the inside of it again for a week. The " rebs" had previously robbed her of everything. Dear heart, she never wanted to see war again. Her fences were not put up yet. So the poor woman ran on, her broken fences troubling her mind more tiian the dead rebels whom she saw " foreninst" her house. This use of a Scotch word led me to ask how it came there, and it turned out that the village of Sharpsburg was originally colonized by Scotch people, who came over here to labour in iron works, long since closed and fallen to ruins. The Government are constructing a cemetery on the battle field, and intend to gather the dead from the holes where they lie, and give them decent burial. The plough now often strikes upon the slain, and the rifle-pits from which the Confederates tried to defend " Burnside's bridge" are filled with corpses which rest only a few inches below the soil. A common farming country it all looks from a hill, with pleasant farms and red briuk English looking homesteads scattered about, the barns and the hay-ricks dotting the scene on every side. But pilgrims from the furthest South come to these fair and pleasant looking fields, bearing a grief with which the conquerer cannot intermeddle, seeking with sad eyes for the graves of those whom they have lost, and go away holding the place accursed.