A 21-year-old U. S. Army officer was crossing a farm field near Sharpsburg, Maryland, when a bullet ripped through his throat. He reached up expecting to feel the end of his life, but instead found only warm blood and managed to stagger off the field to find help.
That young man would go on to become one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in American history. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a captain in the 20th Massachusetts when he was shot at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American history. He was part of Major General John Sedgwick’s division, which marched into what became known as the West Woods on the morning of September 17, 1862.
Holmes had already survived one near-fatal wound earlier in the war. At the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in October 1861, he was shot in the chest, and the bullet barely missed his heart. While lying on the ground believing he was dying, he carried a vial of laudanum and intended to take his own life if the wound turned fatal. Hospital staff convinced him to take pain medication, and someone removed the bottle from his hand while he slept.
By the time he reached Antietam, Holmes had seen enough of war to turn against it. But he continued to serve, marching with his regiment through fields littered with dead and wounded soldiers from the earlier fighting around Miller’s Cornfield. Sedgwick’s division, about 5,000 men, advanced toward the West Woods at roughly 9:30 a. m.
The attack was not part of the original plan, and it ended in disaster. Confederate forces under Lafayette McLaws, John G. Walker, and others struck the column from multiple sides. Out of the 5,000 men who crossed that field, about 2,200 became casualties.
Holmes was among them. A bullet entered his neck, tore through muscle, and missed his carotid artery by less than an inch. A surgeon looked at his wound and said, “I have no time for dead men,” leaving him for dead. Holmes survived anyway.
His father, the famous poet and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. , traveled to find his wounded son after the battle. He later wrote a glowing article about locating the captain, a gesture the younger Holmes resented and never fully forgave. Holmes recovered and returned to duty.
He missed the Battle of Fredericksburg due to a severe case of dysentery, a sickness that may have saved his life. He suffered a third wound at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, which kept him out of Gettysburg. During the Overland Campaign of 1864, he served on horseback as an aide, constantly moving between commands. He saw President Abraham Lincoln at Fort Stevens during a Confederate raid on Washington in July 1864.
When his enlistment ended, Holmes left the army and went home, deciding he wanted a future beyond the war. After the war, Holmes graduated from Harvard, where he had completed his studies before enlisting. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1867 and practiced law in Boston for two decades. He later served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court before President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.
S. Supreme Court in 1902. Holmes served on the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years and became one of the most cited justices in American legal history. He read thousands of books over his lifetime, was known for his sharp wit and love of debate, and had a life that connected the American Revolution to the mid-20th century.
His grandmother had told him stories of British troops in the streets, and he lived long enough to meet President John F. Kennedy. The wound he suffered in the West Woods at Antietam changed the way he viewed sacrifice and duty. He no longer believed in throwing away his life for a cause, but he understood service as a duty he had signed up for.
He carried that perspective with him for the rest of his long life.