Preservationists see win at Antietam

Monday is 150th anniversary of Civil War battle. Public-private efforts saluted.

The fighting that killed or wounded 21,000 Americans in the rolling hills of western Maryland was over in about 12 grisly hours.

But a century and a half after the bloodiest day in American military history, the struggle to preserve the ground where Union and Confederate soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam only now appears close to a declaration of victory.

As Americans gather Monday on the 150th anniversary of the battle, they will do so at one of the nation’s best-preserved Civil War sites.

Unlike many of the places where Union and Confederate forces clashed, Antietam offers visitors the opportunity to view the terrain much as it appeared at the time.

“It’s a remarkable success story of historic preservation,” said O. James Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Trust.

The prospects for Antietam’s preservation didn’t always appear so hopeful. For three straight years, 1989 to 1991, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Antietam among its 11 most threatened historic places because of encroaching development.

Now the National Trust considers Antietam a model of public-private cooperation to preserve historic land — not just on the battlefield, but in the surrounding area.

“At Antietam, the context for the battlefield also is conserved,” said Rob Nieweg, director of the trust’s Washington field office. “The public in 2012 or 2050 will have the opportunity to envision what happened here.”

Antietam was a turning point in the war. Coming after a string of Union defeats at the hands of Gen. Robert E. Lee, it was just enough of a victory to allow Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength. That act, freeing the slaves in the rebellious states, changed the character of the war and the country.

The battle was the culmination of a campaign in which Lee launched an invasion of Maryland, a slave state he believed was ready to be detached from the Union. On Sept. 17, 1862, as the two armies clashes, upwards of 3,700 Union and Confederate soldiers died — more deaths than in the 9/11 or Pearl Harbor attacks.

In the 1890s, Antietam became one of the first five Civil War battle- fields — along with Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Shiloh and Chattanooga — to be put under the administration of the War Department as a park. But for many years, the National Park Service, which took over the park in the 1930s, owned only a fraction of the most sensitive sites.

In the two decades since the National Trust’s warning, the pace of acquisition picked up as the federal government increased funding.

Private groups also helped.

Lighthizer said he sees no imminent threat of a subdivision or strip mall popping up where armies once clashed.

“Antietam is 95 percent of the way there,” he said.