Captain George H. Otis of Company I, 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, fought in five battles in less than a month. After the Battle of Antietam, he shares his feelings about the war with his father in Mineral Point.

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The Battle of Antietam, 1862

Antietam, Maryland. Color lithograph of Union lines in the midst of battle. View the original source document: WHI 69490

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Aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, 1890

Antietam, Maryland. Dead soldiers at the site of the Battle of Antietam. View the original source document: WHI 69999

From Original Text: "Dear Father: The first opportunity offering, I avail to write you a long letter of our doings in Maryland. I doubt not but what the telegraph has informed you of our brilliant victories of Sunday and Wednesday last... Maryland and Pennsylvania are safe enough. In the fights of Maryland we must have captured at least 12,000 of their army. Our late battle field is an awful spectacle — only our own troops have been buried. The Wisconsin boys were nicely interred and a fence built around their graves — the place marked &c. If you should pass over that field, you would never go over another. The dead so disfigured — swollen and black as ebony. It would seem out of the question for human beings to be treated so, but be it said — war has its evils... Strange to say, I have passed through all these battles without getting a scratch. I am comparatively alone with twelve or fourteen men, and I assure you I feel lonesome —and at times moan, pine, for old Wisconsin. I have seen so much, passed through such terrible fields of strife, that my heart is sickened against war. I would gladly grasp the old "stick" and pick the types "as of yore" [a reference to setting type in a print shop]. But I came here to perform a part, and that part whatever it may be, I shall cheerfully perform to the end."