A fight over a beautiful bridge

The Antietam battlefield is just outside of Sharpsburg MD. The battle there lasted one day and ended up being the most costly in terms of troops. Of all of the Civil War battles, it cost the most lives, more than the 3-day battle of Gettysburg.

One famous situation was the skirmish at the Burnside Bridge. The bridge is very pretty, but that day there were 5700 Union troops opposed by 500 Confederate troops. They were all stacked up on both sides of the bridge -- the Confederate troops had the advantage of holding the high ground. After 3 hours, the Union broke through.

Looking from the Union side to the hill that the Confederates commanded.