Antietam National Battlefield

On November 15, 2005, we toured Antietam National Battlefield near Sharpsville MD. It’s located in the midst of beautiful, quiet, rolling countryside. But granite markers dotted around the area of several miles stand as grim reminders of “the bloodiest day of the Civil War.” On September 17, 1862, Union and Confederate troops engaged each other on Antietam Creek (the Confederacy called it the “Battle of Sharpsville”) and more than 23,000 men were killed within about 12 hours.

Despite such massive bloodshed, neither side won a decisive victory. President Abraham Lincoln, however, used the Battle at Antietam as his opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Clara Barton, tending the wounded of this battle is reported to have said, “War is a dreadful thing ... Oh, my God, can’t this civil strife be brought to an end?”

In the center of those memory-soaked acres of granite monuments, mute cannons and reconstructed split-rail fences stands a little Dunker meetinghouse. It is known as the Mumma meetinghouse because it was built on land donated by Samuel and Elizabeth Mumma for the construction of a house of worship for the local Dunker (German Baptist Brethren) congregation. The tiny structure was built a decade before the historic battle took place around it. One of the most famous images of the Battle of Antietam is an unfocused old photograph of that little white churchouse standing, battered and broken, in the midst of piles of dead soldiers. What a paradox: the humble meetinghouse of peaceful Dunkers standing in the midst of the bloody strife of the Battle of Antietam.

CONVERSATION AT ANTIETAM

Little Dunker meetinghouse, so peaceful and serene,
How I wish that you could speak of what you’ve heard and seen.
Wondering brought me here inside your walls that, whitewashed, glisten.
The silence here speaks loud to me. “I speak to those who’ll listen.”
Then speak to me, small sentinel, of that which gave you birth:
Who raised your sturdy walls? And why on this sad bit of earth?
“‘T’was Samuel Mumma gave the land and helped to build this place,
Ten years before the war scourge God had come and filled this space.
Those who gathered here to pray were simple folk, and strong.
They believed that God is good, and war and slavery are wrong.
On Sundays when they gathered here ‘t’was God’s will not their own
They sought and followed faithfully. But now, those days are gone.”
Then tell me, little meetinghouse, of that awful fateful day
When on Antietam’s near-by banks blue armies met the gray.
“It’s painful to remember that day’s carnage, loss of life.
For near a century and a half I’ve re-lived those hours of strife.
I hear the screams of dying men. Smell cannon smoke and blood.
Feel the shells that broke my walls, and grieve that senseless flood.
I had a glimpse of hell that day and tremble still in terror
At the awful price of human pride, stubbornness and error.”
So now, deserted meetinghouse, from what you’ve seen and heard,
What wisdom would you share with us. Oh, speak to us your word.
“The Dunkers said it long ago and its truth continues still:
‘All war is sin and goes against God’s gracious sovereign will.’”

mshr -- 11-15-2005

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