My Trip to the Antietam Battlefield

On October 1st, 2010 I  went to a place called the Antietam Battlefield with my sister's Girls Scout Troop. My mom and dad also went with us. The Battle of Antietam was a turning point in the U.S history. It happened during the civil war. The civil war was between the North and the South. The North wanted the South to free the African slaves. On September 17, 1862 the Union Army (north) fought the Confederate Army (south) at Millers corn field which is now called the Antietam Battlefield. The battle lasted only 12 hours, but 23,000 soldiers from both sides where killed, wounded, or went missing.This is the most number of people that died in a single day in the U.S history. This is called the bloodiest day in American history. 2 weeks after the battle, President Abraham Lincoln, the president of the U.S at that time declared the Emancipation Proclamation Right. This freed the slaves in some of the states. 

While we were there, we learned how to communicate with flags, the way the army communicated at that time. They used flags to send messages. We also learned how hard it was to load a canon, except we did not actually fire it and the bullet does not really fit in the hole. I played the role of the person that has to go and get the bullet from the wagon manager and deliver it to the people managing the canon. The bullets were real.......and very, very heavy!!!!! After the tour was over we watched a movie about the why this battlefield was so important.

I liked the Antietam Battlefield because we actually got to use the flags to send messages to each other, and I learned how hard it was for them in the 1800s. Now we can send messages through phones, letters, text messages, and emails.