On Sept. 15, 1862, two days before the Battle of Antietam, 23-year-old sketch artist Alfred Waud made the drawing above entitled "Sharpsburg citizens leaving for fear of the Rebels." The tall structure in the middle background is probably the spire of
St. Paul's Methodist Church, which was mainly used as a field hospital for Rebel soldiers after the battle. Unlike Waud's more famous Antietam sketches below, this drawing is seldom published in books and magazines. Because of the limits of technology of the time, photographs did not appear in newspapers during the Civil War, so the works of sketch artists such as Waud were very popular. Waud, who worked mainly for
Harper's Weekly during the war, sketched every major battle the Army of the Potomac fought in between 1861 and 1865.
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In a prelude to the Battle of Antietam, the Rebel army crosses the Potomac River as
Yankee scouts watch from the bank. This Alfred Waud sketch has been reproduced
frequently in books and magazines.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
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In this Waud sketch, Rebels watch the property of Samuel Mumma burn after they torched his farm.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
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Citizen volunteers assist the wounded at Antietam in this Waud sketch.
(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
Of course, Waud wasn't the only sketch artist at Antietam. Edwin Forbes, also 23, covered the Army of the Potomac for
Frank Leslie's Illustrated, one of the more popular newspapers of the era. I'm especially intrigued by an illustration below of a Rebel hospital that Forbes drew on the morning or afternoon of Sept. 18, 1862. Lee's battered army retreated across the Potomac and back into Virginia that evening. Confederate wounded and dead lay on the ground outside the farmhouse, undoubtedly the home of Stephen Grove on Shepherdstown Pike. (Forbes did not identify the owner of the property in a notation on the sketch.) In early October 1862, President Lincoln met with General George McClellan at the farm, where the two icons of their day were captured in a famous photograph by Alexander Gardner.
That image, as well as the Antietam sketches of
Waud and
Forbes, is available on the excellent
Library of Congress web site. And here are more in-depth posts on
Waud and
Forbes over at the
Emerging Civil War blog.
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In this sketch by Edwin Forbes, Rebel wounded and dead lay near a farmhouse while signalmen
are perched atop the roof. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
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In this Forbes sketch, the Union IX Corps pushes across Antietam Creek at Burnside Bridge
at 1 p.m. on Sept. 17, 1862. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.) |
It is indeed St Paul's in Waud's drawing of townsfolk rolling out. I used a satellite map of Sharpsburg to pinpoint Waud's vantage point. With the sharp curve in the road, gradual rise towards the artist's location, St Paul's distinctive spire center distance, and mountainous background, Waud had to be positioned on the west side of modern Rte 65, at the edge of Reel's property. There is simply no other terrain in Sharpsburg that would support such a vista. Waud was perched roughly across from today's Battlefield Market, a tad north of it, facing southeast. The only aspect of the drawing I cannot reconcile with the Cope maps is the apparent lack of a stone fence on the east side of the Hagerstown Pike? Oh, by the way; the citizens were heading north. Duh!
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