behind AotW

One of the saddest stories of Antietam is that of the vain heroism of the men of the 7th Maine Infantry on the Piper Farm at about 5 pm on 17 September 1862. Their ill-considered charge there destroyed the regiment as a fighting force and obtained little result.

[Battle Map #15 on AotW]

Their commander, Major Thomas Worcester Hyde of Bath, Maine, described it in his after-action report 2 days after the battle and refined his narrative in his later memoir Following the Greek Cross, or, Memories of the Sixth Army Corps (1894), which I’m excerpting here to accompany a new battle map on AotW.

Colonel Irvin [William H Irwin] of the 49th Pennsylvania commanded our brigade at Antietam. He was a soldier of the Mexican War, and had been wounded at Resaca de la Palma. He was a gallant man, but drank too much, of which I was then unaware.

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I’ve been spending more time than I used to with each soldier I enter into the database, so it’s taken almost two years to add the last thousand. There are now just over 21,000 people-pages on Antietam on the Web.

The latest additions are from the 5th Alabama Infantry, who suffered more than 150 casualties in Maryland, notably at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862, where most of three Companies were killed or captured.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Antietam on the Web (AotW).

My work online about the battle began in 1992 with a collection of text files, but I consider the birthday of AotW to be 1 November 1996 when I first launched the website.

That first site on a free service called GeoCities consisted of 3 simple battlefield maps, profiles of about 100 senior officers, a basic order of battle, and some text exhibits.  It’s somewhat larger in depth and scope now.

A decade later, in March 2006, I started posting here on behind AotW as accompaniment. So the blog celebrates a big anniversary, too, now in its 15th year.

I plan to keep adding to Antietam on the Web and occasionally blogging for at least a couple more years, so I hope both my readers will stick around for that.