TWISTS OF CHANCE · 13 SEP 1862 · FREDERICK, MARYLAND
The lost order stays lost
On 13 September 1862 two Union soldiers resting in a Maryland meadow found Robert E. Lee’s entire campaign plan wrapped around three cigars, and the road to Antietam and emancipation ran through that clover. This is the timeline where the courier drops nothing.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
13 SEP 1862 · A MEADOW NEAR FREDERICK
Two armies have used this clover field inside a week. On the morning of 13 September the 27th Indiana halts in it, a meadow east of Frederick where D. H. Hill’s Confederates camped three days before. Corporal Barton W. Mitchell settles into the grass near Sergeant John Bloss, glad of the shade. In our timeline his hand finds an envelope holding three cigars, wrapped in a sheet that lists where every division of Lee’s army will stand for the next four days.
In the timeline recorded here the courier, whoever he was, drops nothing. The order stays in a coat pocket and is delivered like any other. Mitchell smokes his own tobacco. The grass is only grass.
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