If you were atop this monument to the nation’s first president 150 years ago today…
…you’d see parts of two armies preparing for battle…
… in the valley drained by Antietam Creek.
But, if you were in downtown Washington (as I will be today due to some work commitments), you might have picked up a copy of the Washington Star. Somewhere on the second page of that paper would be an article describing “Rebel Order No. 119” which was found by a soldier from “Colonel Colgrove’s” regiment. The misidentified orders, according to the paper indicated the Confederates planned to attack Harpers Ferry and concentrate at Hagerstown, Maryland.*
Security managers would die a fright at the laxness of operational security, on both sides of the line, on this day in 1862.
* From The Lost Order and the Press, by Scott M. Sherlock, Civil War Regiments, Volume Six, No. 2, pages 174-76.
To the Sound of the Guns 