HOVER ON IMAGE FOR "NOW" PHOTO
THEN: Unknown photographer, Oct. 11, 1894 | Courtesy Gil Barrett via Stephen Recker,Rare Images of Antietam And the Photographers Who Took Them.
NOW: John Banks, July 2, 2017. (Sorry, hover effect does not work on phones, tablets.)
In its first battle of the war, the 16th Connecticut was routed in a field of head-high corn at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862,. Here's an excerpt from the moving dedication speech for the regiment's monument at Antietam by former 16th Connecticut Lt. Colonel Frank Cheney, who was severely wounded during the battle. He was discharged for disability on Christmas Eve 1862. In the "Then" image above, Cheney may be the second man to the right of the monument.
QUOTE/UNQUOTE: "The general history of the Battle of Antietam has been written many times, and rewritten in all of its details. Just and unjust praise has been bestowed for what was done, and vain regrets wasted over what was left undone. The part of its true history which comes home to us to-day is that in which this small remnant of our regiment and our dead comrades were a part. The story of each man’s own life is the only atom of history he has knowledge of at first hand — what he knows about himself and his companions in arms; how they came to be soldiers; how they lived and looked in camp and on the march, in winter and summer, in storm and sunshine, at rest and in the thick of the fight alive; — full of courage and high hopes; then, dead on the field, or sadder yet, in the hospital; the hurried burial, or the slow funeral march; the last volley over the grave, and the march back to quick time. These war scenes come rolling over you with those of that bloody day at Antietam thirty-two years ago."
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