behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

  • Julius Rabardy loses his leg, lives a life

    In his diary after the battle of Antietam Private Julius Rabardy wrote:

    The air is full of explosions and the smell of brimstone, missiles of all kinds strike the trees and dead branches fall among the wounded. I was shot through the right thigh. A poor fellow with uplifted arm begs for water. The arm is shot off and the man speaks no more. A Confederate lies in front of me with a horrible wound. It is Hell. I close my eyes. It is probably from loss of blood, sick at the sight of such carnage. I became unconscious. When I recovered all is quiet.

    The regimental surgeon amputated his leg later that day. He was not yet 30 years old and it would seem his best years were now behind him …

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  • Capt Frank V Winston

    Captain Frank V Winston, a lawyer from Louisa County, led the 13th Virginia Infantry at Sharpsburg. His photograph is in the collection of the Library of Congress.

  • Lt Prosper Landry

    Jean Reynaud Jacques Prosper Landry, known by Prosper, was 2nd Lieutenant of the Donaldsonville Louisiana Artillery on the Maryland Campaign, and had a narrow escape near Shepherdstown, VA on 20 September 1862. His photograph was published in Bob Grenier’s Central Florida’s Civil War Veterans (2014), the original contributed by Victor E. Smith III.

  • Capt Victor A Maurin

    A storekeeper and pre-war Mayor of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, Captain Victor A Maurin commanded the Donaldson Artillery on the Maryland Campaign. This photograph of him was published in Michael Marshall’s Gallant Creoles (2013), a history of the battery.

  • NY Times, 20 September 1863

    In a letter published in the New York Times in September 1863, Colonel Robert C. Hill discussed a conversation he had with Federal General George Custer near Fredericksburg, VA in August which had apparently been misconstrued. Colonel Hill commanded the 48th North Carolina Infantry in action around the Dunker Church at Sharpsburg in 1862. Sadly, the Colonel was quite ill by late 1863 and died in December.