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| The John A. Raudibaugh Diary |
On the flyleaf of a tiny, much-stained, and worn leatherette pocket diary, an inscription is written: John A Raudibaugh / His Book / jond [joined] the Army on the 8 of August 1862 / Co H. 133 Regt P V..." [1]
The entries begin on August 19, 1862, as the newly formed 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers trained to join the Army of the Potomac. Then, just weeks later, on September 9, the troop was hastily assembled and ordered to the Washington City arsenal to draw additional arms.
The regiment’s hurried preparations signaled the reality of war settling upon them—training gave way to marching orders, and marching orders led them straight into history’s unfolding chaos. Just days after their hurried assembly, Raudibaugh’s diary would bear witness to one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on American soil - not the battle itself, but the aftermath.
Road to Antietam
As Raudibaugh’s regiment moved through Frederick City on September 17, just hours after the bloody battle at Antietam, the weight of war was everywhere. The streets swelled with roughly 800 captured Confederate soldiers, their faces worn from battle, their futures uncertain. They mingled with 900 Union men, hastily paroled by the retreating Army of Northern Virginia. [1]
The two groups, bitter enemies on the battlefield mere hours before, now trudged side by side in uneasy proximity—prisoners of circumstance, waiting for whatever came next. Yet, amid the grim procession, women stepped forward, offering water to the weary soldiers as they passed, their quiet acts of mercy cutting through the realities of war.
As the soldiers pressed forward along the National Road, moving through Middletown, across South Mountain at Turner’s Gap, and into Boonsboro, they witnessed firsthand the long trains of ambulances bearing the wounded from Sharpsburg.
The National Road—once a vital artery of commerce—had become a corridor of misery, lined with the grim echoes of battle.
With each mile, the scars of war deepened. Sharpsburg, the town closest to Antietam’s killing fields, bore the worst of it. When the 133rd finally arrived, the devastation was unmistakable—bullet-riddled homes, shattered windows, and artillery-scarred buildings lined the streets, remnants of a battle that had turned the town into an unintentional extension of the battlefield. [1]
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| Union artillery shells badly damaged the Lutheran Church (built in 1768) on the east side of Sharpsburg. (Library of Congress) |
Unlike Boonsboro and Middletown - where war had passed through - Sharpsburg had been engulfed by it. Its residents would not merely live with memories of the fight—they would endure its lingering effects for years - their homes, farms, and daily lives reshaped by the destruction that had unfolded just beyond their doorsteps.
The Staggering Carnage
The 133rd Pennsylvania Volunteers reached the battlefield early that evening. As they formed a line of battle and moved forward, the soldiers found themselves in a setting frozen in the immediate aftermath of horrific violence—a place still thick with the day's grim remnants. Many of the more than 23,000 soldiers - dead and wounded - remained where they had fallen, their bodies untouched by rescue or burial efforts that had barely begun.
Staggered by the scale of the carnage, a stunned Raudibaugh recorded his observation in his diary the next day: "…on the ground whare [sic] the Battle was yesterday and the dead is not all Beriad [sic] yet that was kild [sic]." [1]
His astonishment speaks to his inexperience. Did he and his comrades truly believe thousands of bodies could be buried in mere hours? For these citizen-soldiers, it was a brutal realization—war’s grim work didn’t stop with the last gunshot. In many ways, it had only just begun.
That night, they bivouacked amid the wreckage, and with the Confederate rearguard just a few miles away, Raudibaugh's diary entry echoed the fear and uncertainty that still gripped the Union troops. "Wee [sic] is in line of Battle," he wrote."Expecting a fight every minit [sic]." [1]
But the real threat wasn’t the retreating Confederates. There was another enemy far less visible but no less lethal - on the horizon.
In the Wake of America's Bloodiest Single Day
The morning after their arrival, Raudibaugh and his unit were ordered to begin the grim task of burying the dead. But the battlefield itself made even this solemn duty a struggle—the limestone terrain around Sharpsburg made grave-digging difficult, and the sheer number of bodies made the work overwhelming. [2]
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| Union burial detail digging a temporary grave at Antietam 2 days after the battle. [Note the stacked rifles to the right.] (Photo taken by Alexander Gardner - the Library of Congress) |
Despite their efforts, burial at Antietam was slow and insufficient. The rush to inter over 5,000 thousands fallen soldiers meant most trenches were shallow and hastily dug, with little time for permanence. Confederate dead - buried separately from Union troops - often remained exposed for days as burial efforts prioritized the Union fallen. [2] [**]
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| A Union soldier surveys one of the thousands of temporary graves being dug 2 days after the Battle of Antietam [Note the dead horse to the left of the tree.] (Photo taken by Alexander Gardner - the Library of Congress) |
For months afterwards, visitors reported seeing skulls and bones scattered across farms. One traveler in 1865 - three years after the battle - was horrified to find foraging hogs carrying human limbs, a gruesome sight that sparked outrage.
Modern studies by WHO and the CDC, as Cowie notes, confirm that dead bodies alone don’t cause disease outbreaks—but what happens when some of those bodies carried typhoid fever or other communicable diseases at the time of death? Or when waste—rather than being burned immediately—was left to decompose, contaminating water sources? [2]
Because of the sheer volume of destruction, the entire Antietam battlefield was a breeding ground for contamination:
- Thousands of dead horses lay decomposing alongside fallen soldiers.
- Tons of manure from cavalry and supply animals contained E. coli and other dangerous bacteria.
- Human waste from 75,000 soldiers seeped into the soil.
- Hundreds of livestock carcasses, butchered by the army, added to the contamination.
- Swarms of houseflies, drawn to the decaying bodies, carried pathogens to food sources.
Makeshift hospitals sprang up wherever space allowed—barns, houses, churches, stores, sheds, carriage houses, corncribs, stables, even mangers. Some wounded were left outside, exposed to the elements under canvas tents, on haystacks, or laid out in fields and orchards where medical aid was scarce.
The conditions were so horrific that even seasoned medical personnel struggled to describe what they witnessed. Dan Holt, a surgeon with the 121st New York Volunteer Infantry, wrote to his wife on September 25:
"I have seen, stretched along, in one straight line, ready for interment, at least a thousand blackened, bloated corpses with blood and gas protruding from every orifice, and maggots holding high carnival over their heads. Then add the scores upon scores of dead horses, sometimes whole batteries lying alongside, still adding to the commingling mass… Every house for miles around is a hospital, and I have seen arms, legs, feet, and hands lying in piles, rotting in the blazing sun… unburied and uncared for… adding to the putrid mess." [3]
While Gettysburg’s post-battle cleanup has been well documented, Antietam’s sanitation nightmare remains largely overlooked. The rotting bodies, contaminated water, and disease-ridden air were just as much a part of that battle’s legacy as its staggering casualty count.
What Made Sharpsburg Unique?
According to historian Steven Cowie in his book, When Hell Came to Sharpsburg (Savas Beatie, 2022), several factors made Sharpsburg’s aftermath unlike any other battlefield.
First, there was the battle itself—the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 23,000 killed and wounded. The sheer magnitude of violence, the terror inflicted on soldiers and civilians, and the horrible aftermath of unburied bodies and dead horses made the scene unlike anything the country had seen before.
But what truly set Sharpsburg apart from other battlefields—including Gettysburg—was McClellan's decision to keep his army in place after the battle. So, instead of pursuing Lee’s retreating army, 75,000 Union soldiers remained in the area for six-weeks, inadvertently hindering the cleanup and precipitating a crisis. [2]
A Prolonged Humanitarian Crisis
A local physician, Dr. Augustin A. Biggs, wrote at the time:
"We have nearly the whole of McClellan’s army quartered here… we are all in a destitute state, and if the government don’t relieve us, this neighborhood is ruined." [2]
Poorly supplied, these troops had little choice but to live off local resources - occupying homes, large tracts of land, and using farms as impromptu supply depots.
With human waste from 75,000 soldiers, rotting livestock carcasses, unburied remains, overcrowded hospitals, and a complete lack of sanitation, disease spread rampantly across the region.
Typhoid fever, diarrhea, and diphtheria became the deadliest killers, sweeping through camps and hospitals, claiming lives at an alarming rate. But the suffering didn’t stop at the army’s ranks—disease seeped into the civilian population, taking the lives of countless local citizens.
The numbers tell the story. Dr. Biggs’s physician’s log recorded a sharp rise in illness beginning in late September. By November, cases had quadrupled, and recovery remained elusive—the grip of disease lingered for eight months, dragging on until May 1863. [2]
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| Monument to a Pennsylvania Regiment Antietam Battlefield Park [photograph - Sky Fire - is by |
The Lingering Shadows of Antietam
Besides being the deadliest single day in American history, Antietam’s legacy is profound—it shaped military strategy, influenced political decisions, and altered the course of the Civil War. Its echoes reach far beyond the battlefield.
Yet, shadows linger over that legacy, ones not measured in casualty numbers alone.
Corporal J. A. Raudibaugh’s diary offers a raw, unfiltered soldier's account of battle’s immediate aftermath—the unburied dead, the wounded struggling for survival, and the shattered remnants of Sharpsburg. His words remind us that war does not end when the guns fall silent—it lingers in unfinished reckonings.
Steven Cowie’s When Hell Came to Sharpsburg expands that point, shifting the focus from a soldier's view to the civilians left to endure war’s cruel residue. The battle didn’t just ravage armies—it devastated homes, stripped resources, and exposed families to disease, turning survival into an ongoing struggle.
Sharpsburg did not simply resume life as normal—it became a prison of its own destruction, held hostage by disease, environmental ruin, and the Army of the Potomac’s prolonged stay. Even months later, bones surfaced from shallow graves, infection spread through contaminated water, and families still lived among the wreckage.
Yet, history often reduces Antietam to its infamous casualty count. Behind all the statistics, the strategy and the troop movements, was a community struggling to survive its own aftermath. Soldiers and civilians alike endured that battle's long, slow consequences—not just in shattered homes and ruined farms, but in suffering that lasted far beyond September 17, 1862.
Perhaps that is Antietam’s greatest lesson—that war’s true impact is not measured in victories or losses or numbers, but in the suffering that lingers long after the battlefield grows silent. Those shadows stretch far beyond history books, reminding us that war’s consequences do not simply disappear—they shift or take new forms, but in some fashion, they always remain.
There are millions of stories from the Irrepressible Conflict. This was just one of them.
Mac
[**] As noted in this post, the rush to inter Antietam’s 5,000 dead meant they were hastily buried where they fell or placed in shallow trenches dug by their comrades. Most remained in those temporary graves until the formation of Antietam National Cemetery in 1867, five years after the battle.
Yet, not all of the fallen were recovered.
In 1988, the skeletal remains of four soldiers were discovered just north of Bloody Lane. Based on New York State buttons, rosary beads, a crucifix, and the specific type of ammunition found at the site, park service archaeologists determined that these soldiers were members of the famed Irish Brigade. They were reinterred a year later on September 17, 1989 in the Antietam National Cemetery. A plaque with their story now marks their final resting place.
It took 125 years to uncover those remains—more still lie beneath that battlefield, waiting to be found—a grim reminder that war does not end when the guns fall silent.
Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease!
Cease with your splendid call;
The living are brave and noble,
But the dead were bravest of all! [4]
~ John Esten Cooke, staff officer to JEB Stuart
from his poem, "The Band in the Pines"
Works Cited
[1] "War-date diary of Corporal J. A. Raudibaugh, Company H, 133rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment". Freeman's / Hindman Auctions website. Retrieved April 25, 2025.
[2] Richardson, Sarah. "Antietam Aftermath: How the Ravages of War Devastated the Town of Sharpsburg". HistoryNet.com - November 1, 2022. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
[3] Nelson, John H. "Battle of Antietam: Union Surgeons and Civilian Volunteers Help the Wounded". HistoryNet.com - July 2, 2007. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
[4] Cooke, John. "The Band in the Pines". Civil War Poetry website. Retrieved April 27, 2025.
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