ity for
this place, which is not far from =B=. It is only fair to Mr. Davis to add
that he claims no personal knowledge.

There are several other places that have been described to me in private
letters, but these need no mention here.

WHY SO MANY ERRORS?

Why has there been so much difficulty in identifying the right locality?

There has been no difficulty, none whatever, among those who knew the
facts. The errors have all come from the ignorant, the imaginative, and
those who have poor memories.

It will be easy, especially for one standing on the ground while reading
these pages, to see that very few except the 10th Maine would witness the
event, as we were so nearly isolated and almost hidden. We made very
little account at the time, of what is now considered an important event
in the history of the battle. It then appeared to us as only one of the
many tragedies in the great slaughter. Nothing was done at the time to
mark the spot, and hardly a note of the event was recorded.

REGIMENTAL EXCURSION.

In 1889, the 1-10-29th Maine Regiment[3] Association made an excursion to
the various battle fields in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia where the
regiment had fought. Friday, October 4th, was the day of the visit to
Antietam. Not one of the company had been there for twenty-five years, yet
on arriving in East Woods we readily and surely identified the fighting
position of the regiment, which was known as the "Tenth Maine," at the
time of the battle. We found that the west face of the woods had been
considerably cut away, and that many of the trees inside the woods had
been felled, but there was no serious change in the neighborhood where we
fought, excepting that a road had been laid out exactly along the line of
battle where we fired our first volley. We have since learned that in
1872, the County bought a fifteen feet strip of land, 961 feet long,
bordering that part of the northeast edge of the woods, which lies between
Samuel Poffenberger's lane and the Smoketown road, and moved the "worm
fence" fifteen feet into the field.[4] Excepting as these changes
affected the view, all agreed that everything in our vicinity had a
"natural look." The chief features were "the bushes," directly in rear of
our right companies; the Croasdale Knoll, further to the right and rear;
the Smoketown Road, which enters East Woods between the bushes and the
Knoll, and runs past our front through the woods; the low land in ou