Monday, October 12, 2009 Cherry Hill Campground, College Park, Maryland

Today was cloudy and cool, so we decided to do the civil war battlefields. Our plan was to go to Gettysburg and stop at Antietam on the way back. Gettysburg is an hour and a half from here and a very nice drive.

Seeing the amount of land covered during this 3 day engagement was amazing. Shocking was the number of soldiers involved and the number of casualties. Lee’s Confederate army had a 70,000-man army and Meade’s Union army numbered at 93,000 men. During the first day alone, the combined number of casualties was around 16,000 men. These are numbers that are just hard to comprehend. During the two-hour cannon-ade on the third day, 7,000 Union soldiers repulsed the 12,000 man “Pickett’s Charge”. When you see the high ground that the Union Cannon had, you can understand how the outnumbered force could repulse the Confederate charge.

Total casualties (killed, wounded, captured, and missing) during the three days was 51,000 men. We were also amazed at the number of monuments located within the battlefield, there were hundreds.



We think it was well worth the visit, even if we did not spend as much time outside as we would if it was nicer weather. But, after we left Gettysburg we decide we would pass on Antietam for today and just come back and relax. Our plan is to head into DC tomorrow to see Arlington and some of the mall.