Antietam: Reading Private Tarbox's final letter

Private Daniel Tarbox

Fellow blogger John Rogers (Oliver Case blog) and I got up before the crack of dawn today to walk a soggy battlefield, proving that we're slightly obsessed about this Civil War thing. (Or perhaps that our SAT scores were extremely low.) We also discovered exactly what Antietam looks like at 6 a.m. on a rainy morning: very dark.

Besides walking part of the Final Attack trail with John, I intended to fulfill a promise to a descendant of 11th Connecticut private Daniel Tarbox by reading the soldier's final letter home to his father, Daniel Sr. Only 18 years old, Tarbox was mortally wounded near Burnside Bridge. The video was shot close to where Tarbox was shot. Other than calling the descendant an "ancestor" in the video, I think it turned out nicely.

Daniel's brother, Louis, arranged for the return of the body to Brooklyn, Conn., where Daniel was buried in early October 1862. His grave in South Cemetery is marked with a flag in the foreground of the panoramic image at bottom. The tall memorial 10 feet in back of Daniel's gravestone notes that he was wounded near Burnside Bridge. Carved into the memorial near the bottom are these words: "Father and brothers, all a long farewell!””

Daniel Tarbox was mortally wounded approximately where the 'X' is in this photo.

                                               Click on image for full-screen panorama.