THE ANTIETAM CAMPAIGN.
CONFEDERATE ADVANCE INTO MARYLAND--THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC SENT
AGAINST THEM--LEE'S PLANS LEARNED FROM A LOST DESPATCH--CAPTURE OF
HARPER'S FERRY--BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN--BATTLE OF ANTIETAM--TERRIFIC
FIGHTING AT THE DUNKERS' CHURCH AND THE SUNKEN ROAD--PORTER'S
INACTION--FIGHTING AT THE BRIDGE--GENERAL CONDUCT OF THE BATTLE--THE
RESULTS.
After his success in the second battle of Manassas, and the retirement
of Pope's army to the defences of Washington (September 2, 1862),
General Lee pushed northward into Maryland with his whole army. His
advance arrived at Frederick City on the 8th, and from his camp near
that place he issued a proclamation to the people of Maryland, in
which he recited the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the
National Government, and told them "the people of the South have long
wished to aid you in throwing off this foreign yoke, to enable you
again to enjoy the inalienable rights of freemen and restore the
independence and sovereignty of your State." At the same time he
opened recruiting-offices, and appointed a provost-marshal of
Frederick. The reader of the classics will perhaps be reminded of the
shrewd advice that Demosthenes gave the Athenians, when he counselled
them not to ask the assistance of the Thebans against Philip of
Macedon, but to bring about an alliance by offering to help them
against him. But the Confederate chieftain was sadly disappointed in
the effect of his proclamation and his presence. When his army marched
into the State singing "My Maryland," they were received with closed
doors, drawn blinds, and the silence of a graveyard. In Frederick all
the places of business were shut. The Marylanders did not flock to his
recruiting-offices to the extent of more than two or three hundred,
while on the other hand he lost many times that number from
straggling, as he says in his report. Several reasons have been
assigned for the failure of the people to respond to his appeal, in
each of which there is probably some truth. One was, that it had
always been easy enough for Marylanders to go to the Confederate
armies, and those of them that wished to enlist there had done so
already. Another--and probably the principal one--was, that Maryland
was largely true to the Union, especially in the western counties; and
she furnished many excellent soldiers to its armies--almost fifty
thousand. Another was, that the appearance of the Southern veterans
was not calculated either to entice the men or to arouse the
enthusiasm of the women. The Confederate General Jones says: "Never
had the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill-provided for as on this
march." General Lee complained especially of their want of shoes. It
is difficult to understand why an army that claimed to have captured
such immense supplies late in August should have been so destitute
early in September.
[Illustration: AWAITING THE CHARGE.]
On the 2d of September the President went to General McClellan's house
in Washington, asked him to take command again of the Army of the
Potomac, in which Pope's army had now been merged, and verbally
authorized him to do so at once. The first thing that McClellan wanted
was withdrawal of Miles's force, eleven thousand men, from Harper's
Ferry--where, he said, it was useless and helpless--and its addition
to his own force. All authorities agree that in this he was obviously
and unquestionably right, for Harper's Ferry had no strategic value
whatever; but the marplot hand of Halleck intervened, and Miles was
ordered to hold the place. Halleck's principal reason appeared to be a
reluctance to abandon a place where so much expense had been laid out.
Miles, a worthy subordinate for such a chief, interpreted Halleck's
orders with absolute literalness, and remained in the town, instead of
holding it by placing his force on the heights that command it.
As soon as it was known that Lee was in Maryland, McClellan set his
army in motion northward, to cover Washington and Baltimore and find
an opportunity for a decisive battle. He arrived with his advance in
Frederick on the 12th, and met with a reception in striking contrast
to that accorded the army that had left the town two days before.
Nearly every house displayed the National flag, the streets were
thronged with people, all the business places were open, and everybody
welcomed the Boys in Blue.
But this flattering reception was not the best fortune that befell the
Union army in Frederick. On his arrival in the town, General McClellan
came into possession of a copy of General Lee's order, dated three
days before, in which the whole campaign was laid out. By this order,
Jackson was directed to march through Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac,
capture the force at Martinsburg, and assist in the capture of that at
Harper's Ferry; Longstreet was directed to halt at Boonsborough with
the trains; McLaws was to march to Harper's Ferry, take possession of
the heights commanding it, and capture the force there as speedily as
possible; Walker was {176} to invest that place from the other side
and assist McLaws; D. H. Hill's division was to form the rear guard.
All the forces were to be united again at Boonsborough or Hagerstown.
General Lee had taken it for granted that Martinsburg and Harper's
Ferry would be evacuated at his approach (as they should have been);
and when he found they were not, he had so far changed or suspended
the plan with which he set out as to send back a large part of his
army to capture those places and not leave a hostile force in his
rear.
On the approach of Jackson's corps General White evacuated
Martinsburg, and with his garrison of two thousand men joined Miles at
Harper's Ferry. That town, in the fork of the Potomac and Shenandoah
rivers, can be bombarded with the greatest ease from the heights on
the opposite sides of those streams. Miles, instead of taking
possession of the heights with all his men, sent a feeble detachment
to those on the north side of the Potomac, and stupidly remained in
the trap with the rest. McLaws sent a heavy force to climb the
mountain at a point three or four miles north, whence it marched along
the crest through the woods, and attacked three or four regiments that
Miles had posted there. This force was soon driven away, while Jackson
was approaching the town from the other side, and a bombardment the
next day compelled a surrender when Jackson was about to attack.
General Miles was mortally wounded by one of the last shots. About
eleven thousand men were included in the capitulation, with
seventy-three guns and a considerable amount of camp equipage. A body
of two thousand cavalry, commanded by Colonel Davis, had been with
Miles, but had escaped the night before, crossed the Potomac, and by
morning reached Greencastle, Pa. On the way they captured Longstreet's
ammunition train of fifty wagons. Jackson, leaving the arrangements
for the surrender to A. P. Hill, hurried with the greater part of his
force to rejoin Lee, and reached Sharpsburg on the morning of the
16th.
[Illustration: THE TWENTY-SECOND NEW YORK NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.]
[Illustration: BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. C. KELTON.
(Adjutant-General to General Halleck.)]
The range known as the South Mountain, which is a continuation of the
Blue Ridge north of the Potomac, is about a thousand feet high. The
two principal gaps are Turner's and Crampton's, each about four
hundred feet high, with the hills towering six hundred feet above it.
When McClellan learned the plans of the Confederate commander, he set
his army in motion to thwart them. He ordered Franklin's corps to pass
through Crampton's Gap and press on to relieve Harper's Ferry; the
corps of Reno and Hooker, under command of Burnside, he moved to
Turner's Gap. The movement was quick for McClellan, but not quite
quick enough for the emergency. He might have passed through the Gaps
on the 13th with little or no opposition, and would then have had his
whole army between Lee's divided forces, and could hardly have failed
to defeat them disastrously and perhaps conclusively. But he did not
arrive at the passes till the morning of the 14th; and by that time
Lee had learned of his movement and recalled Hill and Longstreet, from
Boonsborough and beyond, to defend Turner's Gap, while he ordered
McLaws to look out for Crampton's.
Turner's Gap was flanked by two old roads that crossed the mountain a
mile north and south of it; and using these, and scrambling up from
rock to rock, the National troops worked their way slowly to the
crests, opposed at every step by the Confederate riflemen behind the
trees and ledges. Reno assaulted the southern crest, and Hooker the
northern, while Gibbon's brigade gradually pushed along up the
turnpike into the Gap itself. Reno was opposed by the Confederate
brigade of Garland, and both these commanders were killed. There was
stubborn and bloody fighting all day, with the Union forces slowly but
constantly gaining ground, and at dark the field was won. The
Confederates withdrew during the night, and in the morning the
victorious columns passed through to the western side of the mountain.
This battle cost McClellan fifteen hundred men, killed or wounded.
Among the wounded was the lieutenant-colonel in command of the
Twenty-third Ohio regiment--Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward
President--who was struck in the arm by a rifle-ball. The Confederate
loss in killed and wounded was about fifteen hundred, and in addition
fifteen hundred were made prisoners. The fight at Crampton's Gap--to
defend which McLaws had sent back a part of his force from Harper's
Ferry--was quite similar to that at Turner's, and had a similar
result. Franklin reached the crests after a fight of three hours,
losing five hundred and thirty-two men, inflicting an equal loss upon
the enemy, and capturing four hundred prisoners, one gun, and three
battle-flags. These two actions (fought September 14, 1862) {177} are
generally designated as the battle of South Mountain, but are
sometimes called the battle of Boonsborough. In that the enemy was
driven away, the ground held, and the passes used, it was a victory,
and a brilliant one, for McClellan. But in that Lee, by delaying the
advance of his enemy a whole day, thereby gained time to bring
together his own scattered forces, it was strategically a victory,
though a costly one, for him. But then again it might be argued that
if Lee could have kept the four thousand good troops that McClellan
deprived him of at South Mountain, it might have fared better with him
in the struggle at Antietam three days later.
When Lee retired his left wing from Turner's Gap, he withdrew across
the Antietam, and took up a position on high ground between that
stream and the village of Sharpsburg. His right, under McLaws, after
detaining Franklin till Harper's Ferry was surrendered, crossed the
Potomac at that place, recrossed it at Shepherdstown, and came
promptly into position. Lee now had his army together and strongly
posted. But it had been so reduced by losses in battle and straggling,
that it numbered but little over forty thousand combatants. The effect
upon the army itself of invading a rich country with troops so poorly
supplied had probably not been anticipated. Lee complained bitterly
that his army was "ruined by straggling," and General Hill wrote in
his report: "Had all our stragglers been up, McClellan's army would
have been completely crushed or annihilated. Thousands of thievish
poltroons had kept away from sheer cowardice." General Hill, in his
anger, probably overestimates the effect; for McClellan had somewhat
over seventy thousand men, and though he used but little more than
half of them in his attacks, there is no reason to suppose he would
not have used them all in a defence. The men that Lee did have,
however, were those exclusively that had been able to stand the hard
marching and resist the temptation to straggle, and were consequently
the flower of his army; and they now awaited, in a chosen position, a
battle that they knew would be decisive of the campaign, if not of the
war.
The ground occupied by the Confederate army, with one flank resting on
the Potomac, and the other on the Antietam, which flowed in front, was
advantageous. The creek was crossed by four stone bridges and a ford,
and all except the northernmost bridge were strongly guarded. The land
was occupied by meadows, cornfields, and patches of forest, and was
much broken by outcropping ledges. McClellan only reconnoitred the
position on the 15th. On the 16th he developed his plan of attack,
which was simply to throw his right wing across the Antietam by the
upper and unguarded bridge, assail the Confederate left, and when this
had sufficiently engaged the enemy's attention and drawn his strength
to that flank, to force the bridges and cross with his left and
centre. Indeed, this was obviously almost the only practicable plan.
All day long an artillery duel was kept up, in which, as General Hill
says, the Confederate batteries proved no match for their opponents.
It was late in the afternoon when Hooker's corps crossed by the upper
bridge, advanced through the woods, and struck the left flank, which
was held by two brigades of Hood's men. Scarcely more than a skirmish
ensued, when darkness came on, and the lines rested for the night
where they were. If Lee could have been in any doubt before, he was
now told plainly what was to be the form of the contest, and he had
all night to make his dispositions for it. The only change he thought
it necessary to make was to put Jackson's fresh troops in the position
on his left. Before morning McClellan sent Mansfield's corps across
the Antietam to join Hooker, and had Sumner's in readiness to follow
at an early hour. Meanwhile, all but two thousand of Lee's forces had
come up. So the 17th of September dawned in that peaceful little
corner of the world with everything in readiness for a great struggle
in which there could be no surprises, and which was to be scarcely
anything more than wounds for wounds and death for death.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL HOWELL COBB, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. WALKER, C. S. A.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL LAFAYETTE McLAWS, C. S. A.]
In the vicinity of the little Dunker church, the road running
northward from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown was bordered on both sides by
woods, and in these woods the battle began when Hooker assaulted
Jackson at sunrise. There was hard fighting for an hour, during which
Jackson's lines were not only heavily pressed by Hooker in front, but
at length enfiladed by a fire from the batteries on the eastern side
of the Antietam. This broke them and drove them back; but when Hooker
attempted {178} to advance his lines far enough to hold the road and
seize the woods west of it, he in turn was met by fresh masses of
troops and a heavy artillery fire, and was checked. Mansfield's corps
was moving up to his support when its commander was mortally wounded.
Nevertheless it moved on, got a position in the woods west of the
road, and held it, though at heavy cost. At this moment General Hooker
was seriously wounded and borne from the field, while Sumner crossed
the stream and came up with his corps. His men drove back the defeated
divisions of the enemy without much difficulty, and occupied the
ground around the church. His whole line was advancing to apparent
victory, when two fresh divisions were brought over from the
Confederate right, and were immediately thrust into a wide gap in
Sumner's line. Sedgwick, whose division formed the right of the line,
was thus flanked on his left, and was easily driven back out of the
woods, across the clearing, and into the eastern woods, after which
the Confederates retired to their own position. Fighting of this sort
went on all the forenoon, one of the episodes being a race between the
Fifth New Hampshire Regiment and a Confederate force for a commanding
point of ground, the two marching in parallel lines and firing at each
other as they went along. The New Hampshire men got there first, and,
assisted by the Eighty-first Pennsylvania Regiment, from that eminence
threw a destructive fire into the ranks of the regiment they had
out-run. The fighting around the Dunker church was so fierce, and so
much artillery fire was concentrated upon that spot, that when the
woods were cut down, years afterward, and the logs sent to a saw-mill,
the saws were completely torn to pieces by the metal that had
penetrated the wood and been overgrown.
A short distance south and east of the Dunker church there was a
slightly sunken road which crossed the Confederate line at one point
and was parallel with it for a certain distance at other points. A
strong Confederate force was posted in this sunken road, and when the
National troops approached it there was destructive work on both
sides; but the heaviest loss here fell upon the Confederates, because
some batteries on the high ground east of the Antietam enfiladed
portions of the road. This sunken road, which was henceforth called
Bloody Lane, has made some confusion in many accounts of the battle,
which is explained by the fact that it is not a straight road, but is
made up of several parts running at different angles.
While this great struggle was in progress on McClellan's right, his
centre and left, under Porter and Burnside, did not make any movement
to assist. Porter's inaction is explained by the fact that his troops
were kept as the reserves, which McClellan refused to send forward
even when portions of his line were most urgently calling for
assistance. He and Porter agreed in clinging to the idea that the
reserves must under no circumstances be pushed forward to take part in
the actual battle. This conduct was in marked contrast to that of the
Confederate commander, who in this action had no reserves whatever.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE ACROSS THE BURNSIDE BRIDGE.]
{179} [Illustration: MAP OF THE BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM, 16th & 17th
Sept., 1862.]
At noon Franklin arrived from Crampton's Gap, and was sent over to
help Hooker and Sumner, being just in time to check a new advance by
more troops brought over from the Confederate right.
At seven o'clock in the morning Burnside was ordered to have his corps
in readiness for carrying the bridge in his front, crossing the
stream, and attacking the Confederate right, which order he promptly
obeyed. An hour later the order for this movement was issued by
McClellan, but it did not reach Burnside till nine o'clock. The task
before him was more difficult than his commander realized or than
would be supposed from most descriptions of the action. The bridge is
of stone, having three arches, with low stone parapets, and not very
wide. On the eastern side of the stream, where Burnside's corps was,
the land is comparatively low. The road that crosses the bridge, when
it reaches the western bank has to turn immediately at a right angle
and run nearly parallel with the stream, because the land there is
high and overhangs it. As a matter of course, the bridge was commanded
by Confederate guns advantageously placed on the heights. The problem
before Burnside was therefore exceedingly difficult, and the
achievement expected of him certain in any case to be costly. The task
of first crossing the bridge fell upon Crook's brigade, which moved
forward, mistook its way, and struck the stream some distance above
the bridge, where it immediately found itself under a heavy fire. Then
the Second Maryland and Sixth New Hampshire regiments were ordered to
charge at the double quick and carry the bridge. But the fire that
swept it was more than they could stand, and they were obliged to
retire unsuccessful. Then another attempt was made by a new storming
party, consisting of the Fifty-first New York and Fifty-first
Pennsylvania regiments, led by Col. Robert B. Potter and Col. John F.
Hartranft. By this time two heavy guns had been got into position
where they could play upon the Confederates who defended the bridge,
and with this protection and assistance the two regiments just named
succeeded in crossing it and driving away the immediate opposing
force, and were immediately followed by Sturgis's division and Crook's
brigade. The fighting at the bridge cost Burnside about five hundred
men. The Fifty-first New York lost eighty-seven, and the Fifty-first
Pennsylvania one hundred and twenty. At the same time other troops
crossed by a ford below the bridge, which had to be searched for, but
was at length found. These operations occupied four hours, being
completed about one o'clock P.M. Could they have been accomplished in
an hour or two, the destruction or capture of Lee's army must have
resulted. But by the time that Burnside had crossed the stream,
captured a battery, and occupied the heights overlooking Sharpsburg,
the fighting on McClellan's right was over. This left Lee at liberty
to strengthen his imperilled right by bringing troops across the short
interior line from his left, which he promptly did. At the same time
the last division of his forces (A. P. Hill's), two thousand strong,
arrived from Harper's Ferry; and these fresh men, together with those
brought over from the left, assumed the offensive, drove Burnside from
the crest, and retook the battery.
* * * * *
Here ended the battle; not because the day was closed or any apparent
victory had been achieved, but because both sides had been so severely
punished that neither was inclined to resume the fight. Every man of
Lee's force had been actively engaged, but not more than two-thirds of
McClellan's. The reason why the Confederate army was not annihilated
or captured must be plain to any intelligent reader. It was not
because Lee, with his army divided for three days in presence of his
enemy, had not invited destruction; nor because the seventy thousand,
acting in concert, could not have overwhelmed the forty thousand even
when they were united. It was not for any lack of courage, or men, or
arms, or opportunity, or daylight. It was simply because the attack
was made in driblets, instead of by heavy masses on both wings
simultaneously; so that at any point of actual contact Lee was almost
always able to present as strong a force as that which assailed him.
In a letter written to General Franklin the evening before the battle
of South Mountain, General McClellan, having then received the lost
despatch that revealed Lee's plans and situation, set forth with much
particularity his {180} purposes for the next few days, and summed up
by saying: "My general idea is to cut the enemy in two and beat him in
detail." No plan could have been better or more scientific; but
curiously enough, when it came to actual battle General McClellan's
conduct was the exact opposite of this. By unnecessary and
unaccountable delays he first gave the enemy time to concentrate his
forces, and then made his attacks piecemeal, so that the enemy could
fight _him_ in detail.
Whatever had been the straggling on the march, none of the commanders
complained of any flinching after the fight began. They saw veterans
taking, relinquishing, and retaking ground that was soaked with blood
and covered with dead; and they saw green regiments "go to their
graves like beds." There had been a call for more troops by the
National Administration after the battles on the peninsula, which was
responded to with the greatest alacrity, men of all classes rushing to
the recruiting-offices to enroll themselves. It was a common thing for
a regiment of a thousand men to be raised, equipped, and sent to the
front in two or three weeks. Some of those new regiments were suddenly
introduced to the realities of war at Antietam, and suffered
frightfully. For example, the Sixteenth Connecticut, which there fired
its muskets for the first time, went in with 940 men, and lost 432. On
the other side, Lawton's Confederate brigade went in with 1,150 men,
and lost 554, including five out of its six regimental commanders,
while Hays's lost 323 out of 550, including every regimental commander
and all the staff officers. An officer of the Fiftieth Georgia
Regiment said in a published letter: "The Fiftieth were posted in a
narrow path, washed out into a regular gully, and were fired into by
the enemy from the front, rear, and left flank. The men stood their
ground nobly, returning their fire until nearly two-thirds of their
number lay dead or wounded in that lane. Out of 210 carried into the
fight, over 125 were killed and wounded in less than twenty minutes.
The slaughter was horrible! When ordered to retreat, I could hardly
extricate myself from the dead and wounded around me. A man could have
walked from the head of our line to the foot on their bodies. The
survivors of the regiment retreated very orderly back to where General
Anderson's brigade rested. The brigade suffered terribly. James's
South Carolina battalion was nearly annihilated. The Fiftieth Georgia
lost nearly all their commissioned officers." The First South Carolina
Regiment, which went into the fight with 106 men, had but fifteen men
and one officer when it was over. A Confederate battery, being largely
disabled by the work of sharp-shooters, was worked for a time, at the
crisis of the fight, by General Longstreet and members of his staff
acting as gunners. Three generals on each side were killed. Those on
the National side were Generals Joseph K. Mansfield, Israel B.
Richardson, and Isaac P. Rodman; those on the Confederate side were
Generals George B. Anderson, L. O'B. Branch, and William E. Starke.
The wounded generals included on the one side Hooker, Sedgwick, Dana,
Crawford, and Meagher; on the other side, R. H. Anderson, Wright,
Lawton, Armistead, Ripley, Ransom, Rhodes, Gregg, and Toombs.
General McClellan reported his entire loss at 12,469, of whom 2,010
were killed. General Lee reported his total loss in the Maryland
battles as 1,567 killed and 8,724 wounded, saying nothing of the
missing; but the figures given by his division commanders foot up
1,842 killed, 9,399 wounded, and 2,292 missing--total, 13,533. If
McClellan's report is correct, even this statement falls short of the
truth. He says: "About 2,700 of the enemy's dead were counted and
buried upon the battlefield of Antietam. A portion of their dead had
been previously buried by the enemy." If the wounded were in the usual
proportion, this would indicate Confederate casualties to the extent
of at least 15,000 on that field alone. But whatever the exact number
may have been, the battle was bloody enough to produce mourning and
lamentation from Maine to Louisiana. It was the bloodiest day's work
of the whole war. The battles of Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania were each more costly,
but none of them was fought in a single day.
Nothing was done on the 18th, and when McClellan determined to renew
the attack on the 19th he found that his enemy had withdrawn from the
field and crossed to Virginia by the ford at Shepherdstown. The
National commander reported the capture of more than six thousand
prisoners, thirteen guns, and thirty-nine battle-flags, and that he
had not lost a gun or a color. As he was also in possession of the
field, where the enemy left all their dead and two thousand of their
wounded, and had rendered Lee's invasion fruitless of anything but the
prisoners carried off from Harper's Ferry, the victory was his.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN GIBBON.]
[Illustration: BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL MARSENA R. PATRICK.]
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL G. W. MORELL.]
[Illustration]
{181} [Illustration: THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE WAR--THE NEGRO AND
COTTON.]