If you're looking for a summer trip during which children can learn some history and adults can honor the military dead, keep in mind that this year is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. When 12 hours of battle ended on Sept. 17, 1862, about 23,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing. That day remains the bloodiest one in American military history (including even D-Day in 1944).
Antietam is a Native American word that means "the swift current," but the Union and Confederate armies met there—on good corn-growing land owned by strictly pacifistic German Baptists—because a Southern officer was slow to destroy a copy of Special Order 191, Gen. Robert E. Lee's plan of operations for invading Maryland. A Northern soldier found the order wrapped around cigars, and Union commander George McClellan realized he had an opportunity to destroy a divided Confederate army....
