antietem battle coffee food

William McKinley

Twenty-fifth U.S President (1897-1901). When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the 17-year-old McKinley enlisted as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment. On Antietam Civil War battlefield, the site of America’s bloodiest single battle ever, there stands a 30 foot monument commemorating a Union Army sergeant. At the top of the monument is a stone eagle. Near its base the inscription reads: “Sergeant McKinley, Co. E., 23rd Ohio Vol. Infty,. while in charge of the Commissary Department on the afternoon of the day of the battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, personally and without orders served hot coffee and warm food to every man in the regiment, on this spot, and in doing so had to pass under fire.” McKinley rose to the rank of brevet Major in 1865.