Reconciliationist sentiment rose with the nostalgic gloss that settled over the war. A plan pressed by the strong contingent of ex-Confederates in Maryland’s postwar legislature for both Union and Confederate dead from the battlefield to be reburied in Antietam National Cemetery, created in 1867, was a bridge too early and too far, and the idea was abandoned in the face of angry protests by Union veterans over “making Antietam a burial place for traitors.” (The Confederate dead were ultimately relocated to a cemetery in Hagerstown, which had had a more Confederate-leaning populace.)
