These Confederates photographed by Alexander Gardner along a rail fence had most likely been killed early in the Battle of Antietam. It is known that on the morning of September 17, 1862, men of the Louisiana Brigade had been caught in a brutal crossfire in that particular spot. Besides taking rifle fire, they were raked by grapeshot fired by Union artillery.

When Gardner arrived on the battlefield he was obviously interested in shooting images of casualties, and he took a number of exposures of the dead along the turnpike fence.

A correspondent from the New York Tribune seems to have written about the same scene. A dispatch dated September 19, 1862, the same day Gardner photographed the bodies, is probably describing the same area of the battlefield, as the journalist mentioned "the fences of a road":

Of the enemy's wounded we cannot judge, as the most have been taken away. His dead certainly outnumber ours. Between the fences of a road today, in a space of 100 yards long, I counted more than 200 Rebel dead, lying where they fell. Over acres and acres they are strewn, singly, in groups, and sometimes in masses, piled up almost like cordwood.
They lie ? some with the human form indistinguishable, others with no outward indication of where life went out ? in all the strange positions of violent death. All have blackened faces. There are forms with every rigid muscle strained in fierce agony, and those with hands folded peacefully upon the bosom, some still clutching their guns, others with arm upraised, and single open finger pointing to heaven. Several remain hanging over a fence which they were climbing when the fatal shot struck them.