The Bloody Day
The battle along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, proved to be the bloodiest single day of the entire war. Casualties on both sides numbered more than 23,000. The followng day, photographer Mathew Brady displayed photographs of the dead soldiers in his New York City gallery, prompting the New York Times to state that the images had “done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” Originating in the mid-nineteenth century, stereoscopic views brought the consequences of the nation’s costly fratricidal conflict into hundreds of thousands of homes during the Civil War.
The battle along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, proved to be the bloodiest single day of the entire war. Casualties on both sides numbered more than 23,000. The followng day, photographer Mathew Brady displayed photographs of the dead soldiers in his New York City gallery, prompting the <em>New York Times</em> to state that the images had “done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” Originating in the mid-nineteenth century, stereoscopic views brought the consequences of the nation’s costly fratricidal conflict into hundreds of thousands of homes during the Civil War.