Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
for the Honorable
Dirk Kempthorne,
Secretary of the Interior
Antietam Illumination Ceremony
Sharpsburg, Maryland
December 2, 2006
I am honored to be here on this solemn occasion. I am deeply thankful for the hard work and dedication of both the National Park Service staff and the hundreds of volunteers who make this commemoration possible each year.
The candles that light this battlefield are a fitting remembrance of the brave men who fought and died here. I applaud you for sacrificing your time and labor to honor them.
I find it especially moving to be here today because one of these men was my great-grandfather, Charles Kempthorne.
A private in the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry, Charles Kempthorne had traveled a long way from home to reach this place – more than 800 miles from LaFayette County in southwestern Wisconsin.
At dawn on the morning of September 17, 1862, the 3rd Wisconsin was about a mile behind me on the edge of the Joseph Poffenberger farm.
We can only imagine what was going on in Private Kempthorne’s mind and in the minds of the other Union and Confederate soldiers as they waited for the sun to rise over the corn fields and woods in front of them.
A few soldiers took time to record their thoughts and emotions.
Corporal Arthur Fitch of the 107th New York infantry wrote in his journal: “The stillness of the night is broken by the hostile picket shots close to the front. What are the thoughts that fill the minds of the men as they lie there, anxiously awaiting the morning? Who can describe them?"
Across the lines, Private Ezra Stickley of the 5th Virginia Infantry described his fear of what daylight would bring. He wrote: "...I began to feel wretchedly faint of heart for it seemed timely that the coming of battle meant my certain death."
Then, as the morning fog lifted, 500 Union and Confederate cannon rained down death on the battlefield. Thousands fell in charges and countercharges over the same fields with neither side able to hold the ground it had gained.
Charles Kempthorne and the 3rd Wisconsin moved forward to the Miller farm. Soldiers on both sides fell wounded and dead as the brigade repelled a charge by D.H. Hill’s Confederate Division.
Observing the battle, Union General Joseph Hooker was appalled by the carnage.
"Every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife,” Hooker wrote. “and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield."
As the hours passed and the fierce battle raged, the 3rd Wisconsin moved to the East Woods, which you can see slightly behind me to my left. They made a futile charge on the West Woods immediately behind me and to the right adjacent to the Dunker Church. Imagine if you will, hundreds of young men charging up this slope into a hail of cannon and musket fire.
Imagine each one of these men as a child nurtured by a loving mother only to be hurled into the hell of a Civil War battlefield.
One could argue that it was not a waste. The battle of Antietam, though a victory for neither side, enabled President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, ending the bondage of hundreds of thousands of slaves. Historians note that out of the bloody baptism of the Civil War, the United States experienced a rebirth – not as a collection of states but as a nation and as a people forever united and indivisible.
Yet, as we gaze upon the 23,110 candles shining in the night, we can’t help but be grieved that such a battle had to take place and so much sorrow had to be visited on so many.
For Private Charles Kempthorne, Antietam was his last battle. Sometime during that day – we don’t know when – he fell wounded on the battlefield. He survived his wounds and was transported to a hospital in Frederick. He spent the rest of the war as part of the Veteran Reserve Corps, which served in rear areas.
One wonders what lingering pain he experienced from his wounds and what nightmares he might have had about Sept. 17th, 1862.
I am certain, however, that he would be honored that we are remembering him and all of those who fought with him here along the banks and fields of Antietam Creek.
Perhaps he would remind us what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.”