This Alexander Gardner photograph recorded a group of about two dozen dead Confederates who had been arranged in rows before burial in temporary graves. These men were obviously carried or dragged to this position. But observers of the battle remarked on how the corpses of men who had been killed while in battle formations would be discovered in large groups upon the field.
A writer for the New York Tribune, in a dispatch written late on the night of September 17, 1862, described the carnage:
A writer for the New York Tribune, in a dispatch written late on the night of September 17, 1862, described the carnage:
In the cornfields, in the woods, behind the fences, and in the valleys, the dead are lying, literally in heaps. The Rebel killed, where we had opportunity to see them, certainly outnumber ours greatly. At noon, while a field of corn was filled with a stampeding column of them, one of our batteries opened upon it, and shell after shell exploded in their midst, while an advancing brigade was pouring in musketry. In that field, just before dark, I counted sixty-four of the enemy's dead, lying almost in one mass.
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