A Savage Continual Thunder

At Antietam, the open and rolling terrain benefited the artillerymen of both armies, allowing Blue and Gray alike to place their cannon on high ground and effectively strike enemy troop positions at great distances. Over 500 cannon thundered across the landscape for over twelve hours. The artillery was a separate, specialized branch of the army that supported the infantry. Its basic organizational unit was the battery, which consisted of four to six cannons with approximately 70-100 men and was commanded by a Captain. Civil War cannon came in many models and sizes, but they fell into two basic types: smoothbore and rifled. A smoothbore cannon barrel was smooth on the inside, while a rifled cannon had spiral grooves cut into the barrel that forced the ammunition to rotate like a football, making it more accurate and giving it greater range than a smoothbore gun. The four cannon represented here were the majority of the artillery used in this battle: the two right guns were made of bronze and were smoothbore, and the two left guns were made of iron and were rifled.

Keedysville, Maryland · United States