Walking the Antietam Battlefield

I learned something yesterday about the Battle of Antietam just by walking around. I walked up a ridge that is supposed to have been a Federal artillery position, thinking I would get some kind of panoramic view of the battlefield. But as the picture above shows, the most striking think about this artillery position is that you can't really see much of anything from here. I walked half way across the battlefield and saw only more of the same. The battlefield is a rolling landscape of small ridges and hills, all about the same height, none of them giving a broad view. It struck me that this must be one reason why the battle was such a confused mess: nobody could see what was going on more than a hundred yards away.