I have known our next speaker for quite some time. I remember probably decade or so ago sitting on a bus going from Gettysburg College to the shenandoah, talking about next projects, our next speaker has been a great friend of me and institute and a great supporter of our journal of the Shenandoah Valley during the civil era. So it gives me great pleasure to introduce Brian Matthew jordan. Bryant is associate professor of Civil War History and chair of the department of history at houston state university. Hes the author or editor. Six books on the civil war era, including marching home Union Veterans and their unending civil war, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history in 2016. His more 100 reviews, articles and essays have appeared in scholarly journals edited volumes and popular magazines, so without further please join me in welcoming Brian Matthew jordan. Well, thank you so much jonathan, for that introduction. Thanks for the invitation to participate in this wonderful conference today. Its always a pleasure to be here at Shenandoah University to support the work of the mccormick institute. The work that you do here i am just so admire what youre able to do to preserve the legacy the civil war in the Shenandoah Valley to engage undergraduate students, historical research. Youre a real treasure. I have the unenviable task, of course, of addressing death and destruction. A melancholic topic after lunch. So were going to our best here this afternoon just days after the battle of antietam. The photographer, alex gardner, and his assistant, james gibson, captured in syrupy collodion of the most arresting images, i think of the civil war a federal burial party taking a much needed respite from its macabre toil on david millers farm. There musket stacked. Some men lean on shovels and spades. One slings a pick over his shoulder, the foreground of the image is littered with splintered fence rails and human debris. Lifeless bodies, very likely the the dead of the 124th pennsylvania volunteers raked by a fierce rebel musket tree delivered from the west, arrayed a neat row awaiting their soon to be excavator todd graves. If inspected with care this steria negative one of 95 images collected on the battlefield that autumn yields tantalizing clues as to the emotional toll levied by the civil wars inevitable post battle errand. Somber and sallow faced the burial detail surveys the hellscape around them appearing to oscillate between or or horror and disbelief, while some soldiers in the image engage in conversation. One member of the crew points directly ahead, perhaps indicating the location of the next shallow trench into which rows of bodies will be heaped seated the grounds yet another man turns away from the carnage still others knit their brows in seeming disgust. Among civil war scholars. It has become axiomatic that these photographs of the antietam dead collected and displayed that october in a public exhibits mounted in Matthew Bradys new york city and gallery were the first such images of american dead on american battlefields, but much less and much more significant. I think, is another novelty of this slaughter at sharpsburg. Four prior to its victories at mountain and antietam the army of the potomac never rested upon arms on a battlefield rested from the enemy. The possession of these corp strewn fields then invited many unions. Soldiers first sustained encounter with the grim realities of on a massive scale. This afternoon taking some cues, sensory history and from histories of material culture. I will attempt to examine how Union Soldiers and a few northern civilians confronted the dead of antietam as the sensory history in adam mack has pointed out in a very different context. Our historical narrative is too often allied the ways in which the past immediately felt and experienced by ordinary historical actors. This is especially unfortunate, matt continues these raw feelings and emotions shaped and informed historical memories stimulated and promoted future action indeed keenly aware they were participating in. History. They were at pains to assimilate their precise place in the war as a whole. Union soldiers spent the days and weeks even months after antietam rummaging for meaning living in the shadow of the dead, moored place for six weeks. Moreover the assault that antietam made their senses persisted, such as sustained exposure to the wars basic realities challenged, refined their ideas about the wars conduct and its meaning, confirming for us historians as student of this war that events between battles and behind the lines did as much to shape wars outcome as its combat. Wednesday september the 17th, 1862. Of course, the deadliest day of the civil war in 12 hours near sharpsburg, maryland. Some 23,110 men were added to the wars ever lengthening register of killed wounded, missing and captured divisions thrashed in a simple cornfield field and snared in the fingers of the west woods, bloodied in an old sunken farm lane. The army potomac notched on that day a clear victory. Flushing robert e lee from maryland and ending his to bring the war north, perhaps even into pennsylvania pennsylvania Union Soldiers when it was all over, confronted a staggering on the Antietam Battlefield. The landscape was otherworldly almost surreal. If phantoms from the spirit world could ever come forth bewilder mortals. One Union Brigade commander insists it sure never was their time or place or site so seasonable men their eyes as they survey the mangled bodies littering, the field, the odors of burning animal flesh, annexing their nostrils, the death moans of, wounded men drumming in their ears war, its glories. One ohioan remarked. But it has 10,000 demons in these human tortures that makes eyeballs ache. The heart bleed, the lips and the brain real indeed the sensory overload showed that this soldier tantalize ingly described for us exacted often a physical toll. Corporal Bernard F Blakeslee reported that many soldiers detailed to the burial parties from his regiment the newly formed 16th connecticut became owing to the nature of their work, 24 year old major rufus dawes, the six wisconsin whose unit had trundled down the hagerstown turnpike in the battles opening phase, attributed a severe attack of bilious sick headache to the late excitement in trying times of clearing the battlefield. We are encamped amid a dreadful stench of the half buried thousands of men and horses on the battlefield he protested dawes. Mount, he continued, even trembled in fright himself, and was wet with perspiration perspiration. The odors of battlefield were truly most offending. Some men explained that while they did not mind seeing the bodies, the insufferable their words was quite another matter. You can imagine how it must improve the air to have bodies of men laying above the ground so long. And then the dead horses, mules explained. One massachusetts lieutenant in a sardonic letter to his wife sometimes is just perfectly horrible. Still another baystate volunteer objected almost everywhere. Carrion polluted the air. One regimental surgeon feared that the rank air was breeding a pestilence in his unit, which had been fortunate to see no action in the fight. We must leave soon from this place, he echoed. We should all die. Meteorological conditions only the foul smells generated by antietam, the weather that september was phenomenally hot. Temperatures were in the midst. They would climb as high as 17 nine. The afternoon soon after the battle served only hasten the process of. Decomposition in the humid evenings, the low dense fog that blanketed the battlefield intensified, the until it became, in the words of one man almost unendurable on a veteran of the 108th new york. Remember that the scent of death was thick enough to be cut into chunks. First lieutenant samuel fletcher, whose massachusetts unit suffered 15 4 losses, only nine of the 62 men in his company from their abortive stand in the west woods committed four several days. He could taste the odor of putrefying flesh. For that very reason. Joseph ward, his comrades in the 106th pennsylvania, were unable to eat. Even the food seemed tainted with. Those foul orders that enveloped us. He objected. One had almost to dig ones nose into the ground to get a good breath. As the sensory historian mark smith has observed, the stench of battlefield death constituted a very powerful form of meaning and memory. Behavioral psychologists confirm that olfaction has a unique connection to emotion and associate tive learning further the anatomical overlap between memory and smell ensures that olfaction can tap and retrieve far older memories than other sensory systems. Put simply the men would never forget for the rest of their lives. Antietam offensive aroma. Decades later, they could still describe it with precision. These responses are all the more striking. I think, when we consider the normative smell of the civil war generation. These were men accustomed to dead pigs in alleys, to fecal matter, in the streets, to an age before public. Nor would veterans forget what they had seen, heard antietam carnage made clear wars seemingly limitless capacity for human destruction. Men cataloged with great care the lifelike poses in which they encountered the dead with every rigid, strained in fierce agony, with hands folded, peaceful lay on the bosom still, clutching their guns, hanging over a fence which they were climbing when the fatal shot hit. Target. It is an awful sight to go over the field after the exciting it is over, one soldier remarked, especially after a battle such as last wednesdays turkey circled mournfully overhead, anxious for their cadaverous feast, clinging to life among the dead. The wounded lay in all directions. One soldier jotted down the curses and the prayers, the piteous pleas for water and supplications for medical care that he overheard unable to trans late the battles raving agony into neat or linear. He decided to record something of its auditory elements instead. Decomposition was especially disconcerting, especially from mid19th century americans who looked, of course, to the physical body as an index of ones moral worth and manliness i have seen stretched too long in one straight line, ready for interment. At least a thousand black and bloated corpses with blood and gas protruding from every orifice. One regimental surgeon sighed, maggots holding carnival over their heads. With no small anxiety. George noyes noted that the bodies our late antagonists had turned so absolutely black that could be easily mistaken for a regiment. The irony, of course, was not lost on him, even so the selfdescribed strong hearted soldier confessed that after hed gazed upon as much horror as he could bear. Pennsylvanian james voris agreed. His 34th pennsylvania volunteer infantry tramped across the field on september the 18th, finding the dead putrid, fighting in heaps. Voris and his comrades, he said, had to turn their heads and shut their eyes. Oh, the young soldier. It was sickening, rather than turn away. Still, other soldiers on rations of or alcohol to dull their senses and manage their grief. The bodies had become so offensive. Ohioan reported that men could only endure it by being staggeringly drunk, wincing, turning away, guzzling whiskey. These responses reassured men in a contest of civilizations that had not yet devolved into. While soldiers no doubt strove the selfpossession that military discipline demanded, they nonetheless feared growing desensitize to death and mass violence. Just weeks into his service example, one new yorker regimental wondered if he was already overexposed if it was already too late. I over the putrefying bodies of the dead, he marveled and as little unconcerned as though they were 200 pigs were there am and indeed harder hearted, or whether familiarity ever so brief with such scenes tends to sear my better feelings. I know not, but i can tell you this i slept too soundly. Night in the open air as i ever did, almost under the same blanket with a dead man. As they wandered the fields in a very real sense. The first battlefield visitors soldiers endeavor to make sense of the fight that northern at least cheered as a glorious victory, as the Carol Reardon has noted a soldiers recollection of battle began in his personal memory, scattered snippets of what happened to me. Such snippets, of course, with time, demanded and meaning over time, veterans fill in the many gaps crucial gaps in their knowledge or remedy their dim understand of a larger strategic or operation. Picture. I consult and in many cases appropriate, ing elements from other survivors, published accounts. But these accounts, of course, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, were still years away most immediately then dead men lying the battlefield helped to fill in gaps, helped to tell the tale of the battle. And in the days and weeks after antietam soldiers evaluate the position, condition and distribution of antietam casualties as they attempted to piece what the rush of adrenaline in their narrow Vantage Point in battle had denied them a coherent narrative of the engagement in which had participated. The men took scruple less note which had been riddled by musket tree, which had been torn by shot and shell heaps of rebel mounted behind stone walls. The rebel armys appropriation of fence lines as best works, the concentration the dead likewise revealed whether or not the enemy had prevailed at a particular point on the battlefield. Not unlike civilians back civil war soldiers used the numbers of killed and wounded as reliable indices of a units courage or bravery in battle stagger losses betrayed stubborn were wandering the fields. These soldiers spectators made their initial assessment about the contributions of particular to the battles outcome. The morning the battle of South Mountain three days before antietam major george h. Of the 30th ohio brimmed with pride as he surveyed wises field at foxes gap choked with the dead north carolinians of sam garlands. Well satisfied with our work. Yesterday, he wrote matter of factly in his diary. Close inspection of the enemy dead confirmed of northern critiques of Southern Society as a fit and uncivilized east and invited reflection on what was at stake in the larger contest. Yankees insisted not, surprisingly, that dead rebels bore the marks of their character. The marks of a slaveholding society, and in turn that of their treasonous rebellion, according to one commentator they seemed the did to have retained in something of the last attitudes of their combat life, wandering along the enemy lines, a new york zoo of his eyes on the corpse of, a young lad not more than years of age, whose long curls flowed over his shoulders, though his thighs had been terribly mangled, he wore a heavenly smile that exposed teeth remarkable beauty. This prompted the zubov to suppose that the dead boy was probably the pride of some aristocratic family who had sent him willingly to the war to defend slavery. William chamberlin, a medical inspector. The United StatesSanitary Commission who traveled to the battlefield to the delivery of much needed linens, blankets, bandages, whiskey, noticed that decomposition was proceeding much more rapidly among the confederate dead than among ours in incongruity that he attributed to the restricted use of salt in southern rations. For his part, george noyce confessed that the sight of the rebel dead provoked pangs of sympathy, even as he crowed that the dead confederates had merely what they had sown. So ends the brief madness sent him hither to fight against a government he only knew by its blessing. Noyes mused as he gazed upon the decomposed, dozing body of a young rebel officer. In his view, those who were willing to fight, for a ghastly cause, those who are willing to wear forever the necessary furtive slavery, were fated for such a grim end. Soldiers end, other spectators, not only surveyed the location and the condition of the dead. They also took pains, time and effort to inventory the slain many. Historians, of course, have noted the statist tical endeavors of civil war veterans like william freeman, fox and Thomas Leonard livermore, Frederick Henry dyer, who assembled comprehend of numbingly detailed registers of the dead that are still some do by scholars today. Numbers are our currency. What less been less fully appreciated think is the wartime origins of these postwar projects. The obsession with tallying the dead began as soon as the guns fell silent. Such counts could render incontrovertible an armys claim to battlefield victory. As the historian Patricia Klein has observed in the mid19th century, counting was presumed to advance knowledge, since counting led to the most reliable and objective form of fact that there was the hard number quantification and became especially important for antietam veterans, for the veterans of the maryland. When mcclellans failure to pursue lee in the army of Northern Virginia back into the old dominion and a stubborn confederate revision ism conspired both through a face the decisiveness of the battlefield victories scored by the army, the potomac in maryland. In passing over the battleground, which was now in our possession. One ohio soldier was sure to point out it was absent only evidence that the loss of rebels greatly exceeded own. The aforementioned george hilts made a careful count of the dead at foxes gap. At 1. 17 of their dead were lying, touching one another. He wrote their loss. That fight was 5 to 1 of ours. Three days later, the buckeye soldier was no less fastidious at antietam, combing the fields opposite burnside bridge that had been contested by the ninth corps. Samuel wheelock, fisk whose 14th connecticut engaged enemy at the sunken road, counted nearly a thousand dead bodies of rebels lying still unburied in graves and cornfields on hillside sides and in trenches. The excitement of a battle comes in the day of it, but the horrors of it are felt two or three days after he reflected. In addition to these men collected tangible souvenirs battlefield realm made tactile an event that many soldiers could only describe as ineffable. Trophy taking confirmed. The victors triumph over the enemy. The whole field battle was littered with abandoned caissons and cannon rifles, swords, bayonets. Dead animals. The dead of both armies and the accuser. More