The monument to Federal Brigadier General Isaac Rodman at Antietam is off Harpers Ferry Road near the 9th New York monument. (Harpers Ferry Road tour map) This is one of six “mortuary cannons” placed on the Antietam battlefield to honor six generals, three Union and three Confederate, who were killed or mortally wounded at Antietam.

From the monument

Brigadier General
Isaac P. Rodman
U.S.A.
Mortally Wounded
About 265 yards south

Isaac P. Rodman was a banker, businessman and politician from Kingston, Rhode Island. As captain he led a company of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Bull Run. In October of 1861 he was appointed colonel of the 4th Rhode Island Infantry Regiment. He was promoted to brigadier general for his gallantry at the Battle of New Berne. Typhoid fever forced him home to Rhode Island, and he had not fully recovered when he returned to the army for the Maryland Campaign as division commander.

Rodman led his Division in the fighting on South Mountain which captured Turner’s Gap.  Three days later at Antietam he was ordered to outflank Burnside’s Bridge by taking his division downstream along Antietam Creek. After a lengthy flank march they successfully crossed the creek and were advancing on Sharpsburg when A.P. Hill’s Confederate Division suddenly appeared on the army’s flank. Rodman was riding across the cornfield to warn his brigadiers and shift his division to hold off the attack when he was shot through the left lung. He died in a field hospital on the battlefield on September 30, 1862.

Location of the monument to Isaac P. Rodman at Antietam

The monument at Antietam to General Isaac P. Rodman is south of Sharpsburg off the Harpers Ferry Road near the 9th New York monument. It can be reached from a walkway that starts from the east side of Harpers Ferry Road 530 yards south of High Street in Sharpsburg. The walkway then heads 420 yards east and then north to the monument.