One of the classic pieces of Civil War literature is the account left by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., about looking for his wounded son (the future Supreme Court justice) after Antietam. Young Holmes was an officer in the famed 20th Massachusetts; although later he would speak about how his heart was “touched by fire” by the conflict,in 1864 he had seen enough of the war to go home.
The senior Holmes’s story appeared in the December 1862 issue of The Atlantic, and you can read it here.
Crossroads 