The American Civil War, or War of Secession, caused very violent battles in which both sides suffered a high number of casualties. The Battle of Antietam was one of them, fought on September 17, 1862, by the creek of the same name in the state of Maryland, and was considered the bloodiest day of the war.
The scene shows a moment from this battle where a wooden fence was used as protection. The figures were assembled by a fellow modeler and given to me as a gift, leaving only the final touches and the painting and creation of the environment to be done.
This isn’t a new work, but seeing the colleague Christian’s post encouraged me to share it here. Perhaps this way we’ll see more work on these important events in American history.
Very small nit pik , ignore it … the pistol looks like a Colt six gun ? Just spitballin here but was that even around then ? Don’t take this as a negative , there’s too much good goin on .
The Battle Of Antietam was indeed the bloodiest day in American history. Union and Confederate suffered a combined total of 22,727 casualties in a single day. This represented 25% of the Union forces and 31% of the Confederate forces in service at the time. All in one day.
Gelson, excellent work. Thanks for showing us this. I took two guided battlefield tours of Antietam 3 years ago. Somber and sobering.
Here are some of the photos. The third photo is looking across the cornfield towards the sunken road. The bare fields are where the corn fields were.
A view of “Burnside’s Bridge” seen from the high ground of the defenders. These were taken in october. The previous tour was in August and I actually walked down onto the bridge and took a lot of photos but I can’t find those right now.
I think the fence along the Bloody Lane is different. It’s the one with those X-shaped stand. I based this on the black and white photo I posted at the beginning of the project, just to give a sense of the general location.
Well, I don’t know much about the history of these battles, although I’m an enthusiast on the subject. I would very much like to be able to take a tour like the one you did someday. I would also like to do more work on this conflict, but my possibilities are quite limited. I find it very difficult to find material to work with, such as figures, horses, carts, cannons, and variations of weaponry.
I offered this poor interpretation in order to attract more and better diorama artists. Thank you very much for your kind words and the nice pictures.
I don’t know as much about the war and the battles, either. My good friend with whom I took the two guided tours, he can explain a lot and point out a lot of landmarks, he is ar more knowledgeable about the Civil War than I am. What little I know came from reading a lot of the time life books 35 years ago, and listening to Sharra audiobooks.
Modeling America’s Civil War is difficult unless you can be happy with soft plastic single-piece figures. I think ICM or MiniArt came out with Confederate and Union soldiers, like four or five of them per set.
Otherwise, seems like cast metal 54 mm or smaller scale is all you can hope for…like these:
