The Forgotten Bridge of the Battle of Antietam: Unknown Antietam 159

hey everybody welcome back uh on the american battlefield trust coverage of uh obscure or unknown antietam and you know i think some of you know that there are three main bridges stone bridges spanning antietam creek in 1862 on the battlefield so there's the upper bridge the middle bridge and the lower bridge and here we stand at the middle bridge hold on wait the middle bridge isn't there anymore here we stand at the lower bridge or burnside bridge wait there's buildings behind it it's not there so obviously here we stand at the hooker bridge or the upper bridge hold on wait this bridge looks bigger dennis help me out dennis fry save historic antietam foundation well gary you are at a stone bridge of antietam this is a four arch stone bridge known as the antietam iron works bridge and we're located now south of the battlefield if we if we went that direction if we went upstream we went up literally elevation to burnside bridge which would be the next stone bridge above this one via the creek it would be almost three miles from here because the creek just curls and turns it's like a serpent serpentine movement getting down here we are very close to the potomac river the potomac river is this direction less than 200 yards from here so we're almost at the very end of the antietam creek draining from franklin county pennsylvania south through washington county where sharksburg and antietam battlefield is located here to the potomac potomac river very very nearby so why are we here was this part of the battle no no fighting here was it part of the campaign absolutely this bridge is original not a reconstruction this bridge has been standing here since 1832 built 30 years prior to the battle the bridge as you can see still carries modern vehicular traffic so it was built to last i've been here in floods where this bridge is completely submerged beneath the antietam creek it's gone but it's not gone the water subsides and there it is standing now for what a hundred almost 200 years it's on it's coming up on its 190th birthday the antietam ironworks bridge we refer to it as the ironworks bridge because there was a large industrial complex here that truly was an iron manufacturing complex where they smelted iron and then they produced products from that smelted iron so antietam iron works now if we were flying if we could just hitch a hike with a crow we're only about a mile and a half from the burnside bridge that's how close we are to the actual battlefield but i said this was really integral to the campaign and what i mean by that is the road over this bridge is the harpers ferry sharksburg road running from harpers ferry that direction about eight miles from here to sharpsburg that direction about two miles from here and you've probably heard of the great cavalry escape from harper's ferry right under the nose of stonewall jackson gary and i have talked about this before where harper's ferry is being strangled by jackson the confederates have the mountains and on the night of september the 14th sunday the 14th three days before antietam 1400 united states cavalrymen get out of harpers ferry and in the darkness they go galloping north trying to find anybody in the union army to make them aware of the desperate situation in our atmosphere and ultimately they come across the antietam creek over this bridge so they're not stopped the bridge is open there's no opposition eventually those cavalrymen make it all the way to green castle pennsylvania in fact they capture long streets reserve ammunition train along the way and escort it to green castle so why is that so important well george mcclellan knows about this cadbury escape the man who leads the cadaver escape comes down here to the battlefield by september the 18th the day after the big fight mcclellan would know about this bridge from benjamin grimes davis colonel davis mcclellan would also know about this bridge from local scouts and local citizens he would even have maps that would show the location of this bridge why then are we here well not only is because of the cavalry escape but what could have happened let's assume for a moment that robert e lee does not withdrawal on september the 18th doesn't leave still continues to hold that high ground there near sharksburg and mcclellan's trying to figure out what do i do now we already we've already talked about he can't just blast straight ahead because lee holds such great high ground there that's not going to succeed but we always know you can try to get around the enemy and what a perfect opportunity we're on the union side of the creek right over there burn sides men aren't far away burnside's not been defeated he's still got a lot of fight left in him and so mcclellan could have taken burnside's core he could have taken the newly arrived fifth core he could have taken elements of other core that have not seen as much service and on the 19th that lee had been so bold so dared to continue to stand on that ground at sharksburg this was a way around him this was a flanking maneuver that could have been occurred not unlike the chancellorsville move that jackson jackson employs but not nearly as far not nearly as difficult this would have only been a a walk of about four miles total to be able to outflank lee get behind him using this bridge i have no doubt that one reason general lee decided to retire back into virginia on the night of the 18th and 19th he knew about this bridge too and he knew he did not have the soldiers the manpower the artillery to guard the line north of here all the way down to this position no way he can hold it and so this was a vulnerable point for robert e lee it was an opportunity from george mcclellan had lead decided to stay on the 19th but he left beforehand and the bridge falls into military obscurity but it could be a bridge nearly as famous as the burnside bridge at sister bridge just a few miles to the north one final thing notice the four arches on this bridge well that's because we're near the mouth of the antietam almost in potomac the creek's getting wider the creek's getting deeper and the creep's getting stronger as it continues to fall down the slopes towards the river so here we have the biggest bridge across the antietam for archer no other bridge has four spans that's so great dennis thank you so much i think uh you know maybe we do ourselves a disservice by focusing on the most popular parts of history and don't get me wrong you know when i go to little bighorn i want to go to custer hill and when i go to gettysburg i want to go to little round top and pick his charge there's a great place for that but maybe we do ourselves a disservice by only going to the places where it actually where the biggest stuff actually happened or the places that have become famous but rather think about this you know imagine if this was the key campaign point imagine if there was a big fight for this bridge this larger bridge than the others man which looks just as pretty and um and very similar with the exception of the arches to the other one so think about that you know think about when we did some videos earlier this year at gettysburg when we covered pipe creek imagine pickett's charge across the plains coming near pipe creek and i think that might give us a more holistic view so i thank you dennis for all these cool thoughts about this place where i've driven but never stopped before maybe this will be another unknown antietam place that you or you all will come to so thanks for watching thanks to dennis thanks annelise and thank you for supporting battlefield preservation and education you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

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Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, 159th anniversary of antietam, antietam video tour, antietam battlefield tour, unknown antietam, unknown civil war

Id: zjWrJhdOnNE

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021