Battle of Antietam Pictures.

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pictures from the Battle of Antietam,

The battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day in all of American history.  Even D-Day, the “longest day” of World War II, suffered only a ninth as many casualties.  The tragedy of September 11 is similarly dwarfed by comparison.  23,000 soldiers from the North and the South were killed or wounded on that one day, more than the deaths of all Americans in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish American War combined.  It has been estimated that 7,604 Americans died as a direct result of fighting at the Battle of Antietam, either that day on the battlefield, or soon after as a result of fatal wounds they received there.

As hard as it is to imagine, Mathew Brady was present there as well, fighting neither for the North or the South, but for the greater side of humanity.  His gruesome Battle of Antietam pictures were presented at a public exhibition in New York City, entitled “The Dead at Antietam.”  Many have suggested that the war poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson were directly inspired by exposure to Brady’s civil war pictures.

The battle of Antietam was the endpoint of General Lee’s march north into Maryland, with the victory at Bull Run still fresh on his mind.  A victory at Antietam could have marked a decisive turn of the Civil War.  Maryland, a state whose loyalty to the Union was in question, might have seceded in response and joined the Confederacy.  This might have opened the door to further incursions to the North, as well as diplomatic recognition by England and France.  It was still a gamble, however, and as it happened, the dice were weighted towards the side of the Union.  A most improbable discovery at an abandoned Confederate campsite by a Union officer spelled doom for Lee’s army.  Wrapped around three cigars, in the middle of the field, was General Lee’s “Special Orders #191.”  Once intercepted, his opponent General McClellan said: “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home...

McClellan’s army outnumbered General Lee’s two-to-one at the Battle of Antietam.  60,000 soldiers lined up against 30,000, however, is certainly no easy battle from any perspective.  The majority of the battle was fought in a valley, with large artillery dotted on the hills.  Soldiers’ accounts describe a ceaseless rain of shell, shot and canisters pouring down upon them.

"Such a storm of balls I never conceived it possible for men to live through. Shot and shell shrieking and crashing, canister and bullets whistling and hissing most fiend-like through the air until you could almost see them. In that mile's ride I never expected to come back alive."

-LtCol A.S. "Sandie" Pendleton, CSA.

The Antietam battle pictures, taken by Brady and his team of photographers at the front lines, shook the nation.  An article in the New York Times commented upon his exhibition:

"The dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee... Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it."

The gruesome lessons about war taught to us by Mathew Brady's photographs are still relevant today.  Much like the editors of the New York Times, the deaths reaped by war come to us in abstract fragments, cold statistics that fail to measure the true scope of lost lives.  The dead and alive alike of Brady's Antietam battle pictures visit us as ghosts, whose haunting images are still crisply preserved for our eyes upon these fine reproduction prints.  We have a wide selection of Antietam battle pictures to choose from, which bring the intensity of this battle and its aftermath to our immediate senses.

If you do not see what you are looking for, feel free to contact us.  We have access to a large number of Antietam battle pictures and daguerreotype reproductions, of which only a sampling appear on this website.