Antietam, September 17th

(Midweek Meditation September 2024)

Fingers of mist hang in the hollows. The orange orb of the sun is edging above South Mountain. Sam, Chico, and I head off across the wildflower meadow, a riot of color a month ago, now a buffet of seed heads. The only sound crickets signaling the approach of fall.

Suddenly, cannon fire, commemorating the opening salvo of the bloodiest day in American history. A flock of tree swallows leap from the power line in alarm. Sam and Chico stop midstride, alert to danger. Was it a morning just like this 162 years ago when thousands of young men awoke to their last dawn?
 
Peace returns. The swallows settle. The dogs step forward warily. I send up a prayer of gratitude for this beautiful place and remind myself that even in these fields that once ran with blood, evil did not have the last word.
 
We walk past the cemetery where the Mumma family rest. On that terrible day, Samuel Mumma Sr., his wife, and eight children, members of the “Dunker” peace church, fled the mayhem only to return to find their farm destroyed, home and barn burned to the ground. But their story didn’t end there. They received no compensation for their loss because it was the Confederates who did the damage, but they rebuilt with hard work and the help of their neighbors. Forty-four years later, James F. Clark, formerly of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry, wrote to the Mummas to beg forgiveness for his role in the devastation. Samuel Jr. forgave him wholeheartedly. “As to your burning our house, we know that in doing so, you were carrying out orders,” he wrote. Evil did not have the last word.
 
We head towards the Roulette Farm. On one side a field of peacefully grazing cattle, on the other a bank of brilliantly yellow goldenrod. I think of Nancy Camel who sheltered with the Roulette family during the battle. Born into slavery in 1817, she was freed in 1859, by her enslaver, Andrew Miller, and went to work for Miller’s neighbor, William Roulette. After the battle, she returned to the farm with the Roulettes and spent the rest of her days with them. When she died in 1895, she left the bulk of her estate -- $867.04 and her own home -- to the children of her enslaver and her employer. One account said these families “treated her as kin, not as a possession.” Evil did not have the last word.
 
The mist has dissipated and the sun is above the horizon when we drive home through Sharpsburg. We pass campaign signs and I feel rising beneath the surface calm of this small town angry echoes of that day in 1862. I realize there is no “last word.” There is just the next word, and the next, and the next. I ask myself, what can I do in the “next” of my time, to help ensure that evil does not have the next word for the generations to come?
 
I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.  – George Fox, 1651