BLOODY BEAUTIFUL

NTIETAM NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD is an enchanting place. Its fetching rolling hills and farmsteads and its bucolic namesake creek are a welcome natural and pastoral relief from the Washington, D.C., sprawl that keeps slowly spreading out from the Potomac River basin. It was anything but enchanting, however, to the Union and Confederate soldiers who fought there on September 17, 1862. “The whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red,” remembered Private David Thompson, 9th New York. The story is well-known to most. Major General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac tracked down General Robert