Procession preceding the dedication of Antietam National Cemetery
Bob Zeller Collection
A mass of humanity fills Main Street in Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1867, for the procession preceding the dedication of Antietam National Cemetery. The image offers an eerie sense of how the town must have appeared only years earlier, when masses of soldiers choked the thoroughfare before, during, and after the Battle of Antietam in 1862. The photo was taken by Hagerstown, Maryland, photographer E.M. Recher from the watchtower of the cemetery gatehouse and was originally created and sold as a stereo view.
During the ceremony, President Andrew Johnson delivered remarks, noting, “When we look on yon battlefield, I think of the brave men who fell in the fierce struggle of battle, and who sleep silent in their graves. Yes, many of them sleep in silence and peace within this beautiful enclosure after the earnest conflict has ceased.” Today, the cemetery is home to the remains of more than 4,700 Union soldiers—some 1,800 of them unidentified—killed at Antietam.
Bob Zeller is president of the nonprofit Center for Civil War Photography, which is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images.
