|
As you travel through soft,
curving hills, past grazing animals and rich fields into the small, quiet town
of Sharpsburg, it is hard to imagine the stream of activities and events which
occurred here. Before the famous battle, before the thriving town, and before
the statesman’s country manor, there was the Great Spring surrounded by deep,
green forest and the trails of the Delaware and Catawba Tribes. This spring,
which nourished Native American families for thousands of years before the
Europeans came, is perhaps the only thing that hasn’t changed.
By 1740, Joseph Chapline
established a manor called Mount Pleasant on several thousand acres deeded to
him by the colonial governor of Maryland in exchange for extending civilization
into the area and protecting it from the natives. His estate included a fine
mansion, a chapel, a gristmill, a racetrack and near the Great Spring he
established a trading post. In 1763 with the French Indian Wars finally over,
Chapline established a town, naming it after his friend, Governor Horatio
Sharpe. Thus families began to arrive in Sharpes Burgh, building their homes
around the Great Spring.
By 1820 the
population was at 650.
Over the next forty years, with people
moving
west from the cities and the
advent of the C&O Canal, the town grew.
By the time of the Civil
War, the population doubled to 1300 inhabitants who supported many churches,
stores and businesses. Families were large and connected with each other by
marriage. Although wells were dug, the Great Spring was still a major source of
water and a gathering place for the people.
There are many historic
places in the United States, but few hold the sad peace of a place where
thousands died. Sharpsburg, and the Antietam Battlefield around it, is such a
place. This peaceful family town was the place where the slow moving giant
armies exploded, leaving 23,110 dead and wounded. To the armies it was just
land, with a large creek on the border between the North and the South. For the
citizens it was a cold, rolling tide from which they could not escape. The
thundering devastation of 500 cannons must have been terrifying, and the
aftermath a disaster we can only imagine. Not only were homes and farms damaged
or destroyed and pantries emptied, but the people listened to the screams of the
injured and smelled the stench of death and suffering for months. There were no
empty floors, no elegant parlors, no peaceful churches that fall. The little
town was marked forever. The only thing that didn’t change was the Great Spring
which, while watering soldiers and their horses, kept flowing through it all.
The families in Sharpsburg
did survive. They tore down badly damaged buildings like the old Lutheran church
on Cemetery Hill, and used what materials they could to repair others. The
nation was properly horrified. President Lincoln came to visit the troops. When
the war was finally over, Sharpsburg began a new struggle, having been redefined
as a battle town and a pilgrimage site for veterans and widows of the battle.
The townspeople welcomed them, planting Norway maples to shade them along the
road from the train station to the National Cemetery. Many would stop at the
Great Spring to reminisce and drink from the old dipper that always hung there.
After the war, Sharpsburg’s
population declined until today, as in 1820, it is about 650 people, many of
whom are direct descendants of the families who survived the battle in 1862.
While visitors can still feel the profound stillness of the battlefield, the
people of Sharpsburg are proudest of the fact that their town remains a rural
village of real families gathered around the ever flowing Great Spring.
|
