Military History | Antietam National Cemetery — The Clause That Was Never Repealed

The trustees met in Washington City on 5 December 1867, eleven weeks after dedicating the ground, and took up the question of the Confederate dead.

Their charter left little room. Maryland's act of incorporation, passed 23 March 1865, devoted the lot in perpetuity to "the soldiers who fell at the battle of Antietam or at other points North of the Potomac river during the invasion of Lee," and its fourth section provided for "the remains of the soldiers of the Confederate army to be buried in a part of the grounds separate from those of the Union army." Not together. Separate, inside one wall.

Governor Reuben Fenton of New York wrote urging them to set apart "a sufficient plot of ground within the Cemetery walls," or else to enlarge the enclosure. A resolution to that effect carried, over the votes of Ohio and West Virginia. West Virginia's trustee, G. L. Cranmer, printed two grounds of objection in his annual report to his own governor. The second was that the movement was "premature, and might open afresh old sores." He also recorded what he believed the majority had done. In his reading the ayes meant "nothing more than a desire to formally comply with the terms of the Charter."

Nothing followed. Northern legislatures withheld appropriations, later resolutions were tabled, and Maryland chartered a separate cemetery at Hagerstown in 1870 and sent its money there. The clause was never repealed and never executed.

The board's own volume of 1869 offers "a descriptive list of all the loyal soldiers buried therein," and reports that the dead "from all the loyal States, alike, without distinction" were treated the same. It counts 4,667 interments. Cranmer had counted 4,695 a year before; the Park Service now gives 4,776.

Rows of small numbered stones still run to the fence line.

📸 Cover: Union graves and the lodge house, Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg (Acroterion, 2012, CC BY-SA 4.0). Second image: the entrance gates and lodge from the Sharpsburg road (Acroterion, 2025, CC BY-SA 4.0).