Sharpsburg
A Civil War Narrative
By Kent Gramm
SharpsbUrg
A Civil War Narrative
Copyright © 2015 Kent Gramm. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Reource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3906-6
EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3907-3
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 11/18/2015
For
YVONNE FRINK
and
CHRIS HEISEY
If we could understand its loves,as well as its hates, we would be nearer understanding the mystery of human life.
—John Keegan on the First World War
To the Reader
In the summer of 2015, the Confederate battle flag came down from the South Carolina state capitol; but in the late summer of 1862 it flew higher than it ever had or ever would again. A summer of brilliant campaigns and costly victories had brought the army of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson across the Potomac in an invasion of the North. President Abraham Lincoln promised his God that if slow-moving General McClellan and his Army of the Potomac won a victory, he would issue a proclamation freeing all slaves in the rebellious states. Thus the bloodiest day in American history, the Battle of Antietam, called Sharpsburg by Southerners, became the battle where the war for the Union became a war against slavery.
This is a story of that battle, told by two participants. One fought for the South, the other for the Union. Their ghostly voices still speak for rebellion and equality, and still haunt the American arguments about freedom and race.
Army of Northern Virginia, Confederate States
I am a Rebel
Now, everyone is born a rebel or
a unionist. I wonder which you are.
Might could be, you aren’t what you think you are.
I was a Rebel and I’m still a Rebel.
I’m not ashamed to tell you what I was
and what I am. Some say the War is over
but I have yet to see the evidence.
We are still here. Sharpsburg is anything
but in the past. September Seventeenth
of Sixty-Two: the worst day of the War.
The thing went on another thirty months
and several times we could have won it back,
but the Confederacy was killed that day
along Antietam Creek in Maryland;
it’s just we didn’t know it for awhile.
That was one day—a day to wish undone,
if but the Good Lord worked that way. That day
the War became a war to free the slaves—
became so by old Abe Lincoln’s order.
Of course our institution was the war,
but be that as it may, I’m here to tell
you true: I didn’t enlist for slavery,
except I wasn’t about to permit
some damnyankee government, tell me what
exactly I might do and how and when.
If you were born with rights and property,
you wouldn’t give them up without a fight.
I did not join this fight for slavery
personally, but for the principle.
My household owned no servant property,
but would defend to the death a man’s right
to ownership, however rich or poor.
A lot of good it did us in the end.
I rue it all some days; on better days
I’d do it all again. A man must learn
there comes a time in every decent life
to fight Yankees, whatever form they come.
Possession might be nine-tenths of the law,
but Rights are all the law and what it’s for.
That is the truth. That is the Rebel truth.
So I will tell the truth and nothing but
the truth and many other things
to supplement the truth, so help me God.
Freedom
Freedom is the let-alone all of us
Americans receive when we are born,
a trust passed down from every Patriot
who left his home and family to die
in battle for the cause of Liberty.
Our word for this was Rights. For Rights we pledged
our lives, our liberties, and sacred honor
to the South. At bottom, we’d not be told,
right or wrong, what to do; and they
would just as soon kill every one of us
as let us go our way. Their righteousness
was such that they’d invent a new machine
to kill us with for every point of conscience
in their busy minds, for our property
offended them, was our liability.
They shouldered our responsibilities
because to them freedom was for someone
else, always someone else, whether children,
servants of their betters, posterity,
or anyone in need of fixing as they
saw fit. A man can’t live with such people.
It’s worse than having a churchgoing wife
who’s always better than you, and tells you.
Across the Potomac
The Old Man knew what he was doing. General
Robert E. Lee: the name still sets the heart
afire, and I would follow him again,
right or wrong, as I did in September
1862, the summer of our lives.
The Old Man ordered us across the river
because it was the only move he had.
The victories in Virginia had run
their