The cemeteries of the Battle of Antietam and of the Battle of Shepherdstown, a few days later, are a testy subject in some ways. For one, they are disproportionate to each other. Yes. There are multiple Civil War cemeteries for the battle, but only one is a National Cemetery: the one in Sharpsburg. And that is for only Union soldiers – a vicious payback long after the war ended. When the nation decided to have national cemeteries for the war, the South was broke and couldn’t pay in, so Maryland told them to kick rocks. Originally, this cemetery was to have both Union and Confederate soldiers buried here.
The cemetery is Gothic in design. It was well done. You can park along Shepherdstown Pike or use the small dedicated parking lot just past it, which also has Civil War Trail signs.
The front gate is imposing
Of another time.
Enter and walk into a sadness you can feel deep in your soul.
The sign hidden behind the pillar is President Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg.
The Confederate soldiers were removed, some 10 years out, and transferred elsewhere. To three Confederate cemeteries. Two in Maryland, one in West Virginia.
The number of unknown soldiers is depressing. It was the first war where men started putting ID into their clothing, in the hope they would be found. But as well, so many men after Antietam were buried in shallow mass graves, that when they dug them up for the new cemetery, many were laid into graves only marked with a number. In theory, they knew they were Union, but not who they were – or what state they came from.
The layout is to walk around. Leave the path. walk into it and read the stones.
“Not for themselves but for their country”
The mountains in the distance are the Blue Ridge and the South Mountain.
A giant swatch of men buried together in death. All unknown soldiers. It was painful to walk along this, thinking of their families who had nothing after their men died. Not even knowing where they were buried.
There are a few soldiers (fewer than 300) buried here, from later wars. WWI and WWII are sprinkled amongst the grounds. The cemetery quit accepting after 1953, which is the end of the Korean War,
So where did the Confederate soldiers end up? I have yet to visit the cemeteries in Hagerstown and Frederick, Maryland (they are on the list), but I have visited Elmwood Cemetery twice in Shepherdstown. It is a beautiful cemetery to walk in, sitting just outside of the oldest town in West Virginia.
281 souls are buried here, a few years later, after the war.
Most of the graves are “unknown” as to who is buried where.
However, the unknown grave markers are full-size here, and not the blocks of tiny granite with a number etched on them, as it is over in Maryland.
This cemetery carries both the West Virginia and Virginia state flags, as it was still Virginia in 1862.
The soldiers’ names are listed in detail.
The Elmwood Cemetery is an old cemetery with much history to be learned by walking through it. The Confederate graves are only part of it.
Both are necessary to visit, to walk, to get the full feeling of the history here. Walk lightly and respectfully.
~Sarah