AFTER THE BATTLE.
The army commanded by General Lee in the battle, according to Pollard,
the Southern historian, numbered seventy thousand. General McClellan
states in his report that it was ninety-seven thousand. His estimate
was made up from information obtained from deserters, spies, and
prisoners:--
Jackson's corps, 24,778
Longstreet's corps, 23,342
D. H. Hill, 15,525
Stuart, 6,400
Ransom and Jenkins, 3,000
Detached regiments, 18,400
Artillery, 400 guns, 6,000
------
97,445
General McClellan's forces were:--
1st corps, Hooker's, 14,856
2d " Sumner's, 18,813
5th " Porter's, 12,930
6th " Franklin's, 12,300
9th " Burnside's, 13,819
12th " Mansfield's, 10,126
Cavalry, 4,320
------
87,164
Each division had its own artillery, which is enumerated in the above
statement.
There were twelve thousand four hundred and sixty-nine killed, wounded,
and missing from McClellan's army in this battle. About two thousand of
them were killed, and nine thousand five hundred missing.
The Rebel loss is supposed to have been about fifteen thousand.
Thirteen guns, fifteen thousand small arms, six thousand prisoners,
and thirty-nine colors were taken from the Rebels at Antietam, South
Mountain, and Crampton's Pass.
The army expected a renewal of the attack on the morning of the
18th. It was a beautiful day. Two divisions, Couch's and Humphrey's,
had arrived, which, with Porter's corps and Slocum's division of
Franklin's, were fresh. Smith had been engaged but a short time on
the 17th. There were nearly thirty-five thousand troops which could
be relied upon for a vigorous attack. The reserve artillery could
be brought in. There were several thousand Pennsylvania militia at
Hagerstown, not of much account for fighting, but which could be used
for train guards.
"Whether to renew the attack on the 18th, or to defer it, even with the
risk of the enemy's retirement, was the question with me," says General
McClellan.
He deliberated, and decided not to attack for the reasons, that,
if he lost the battle, Lee could march on Washington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York, without an enemy to oppose him, living on
the country; the troops were tired; and the supply trains were in the
rear. Sedgwick's division and Hooker's corps were somewhat demoralized
and scattered. Sumner thought Sedgwick's division could not be relied
upon to attack the enemy vigorously. Meade commanding Hooker's corps,
said his troops could resist better than make an attack. The efficiency
of the troops was good as far as it went.
"The morale of some of the new troops under Burnside was impaired,"
says General McClellan.[78]
[Footnote 78: Report, p. 212.]
"My command was in good condition, holding its position on the opposite
side of Antietam. One brigade had been severely handled, but I
considered it in fighting condition," says General Burnside.[79]
[Footnote 79: Burnside's Testimony, p. 642.]
General McClellan expected fourteen thousand more men, and taking all
things into consideration he decided not to renew the attack.
General Lee's army had seen great hardship. The Rebels had marched
from Richmond. "One fifth of them were barefoot, one half of them in
rags, and the whole of them famished," writes Pollard the Southern
historian.[80] Lee was far from his supplies. He had no reinforcements
at hand. His troops were much exhausted. A. P. Hill had marched with
great rapidity from Harper's Ferry. Jackson's corps had suffered
as severely as Hooker's. D. H. Hill had lost more than Sedgwick.
Longstreet could hardly be a match for French, Richardson, and the
whole of Franklin's corps. Lee, if defeated, had a great river in his
rear which must be crossed at one ford, which would give McClellan
the shortest line to Richmond. Sigel was in front of Washington.
Heintzelman was at Alexandria. Keyes was at Yorktown. Could not
these forces cut off his retreat to Richmond? He was in a perilous
situation. He sent his wounded across the Potomac to Martinsburg
and Winchester,--also his wagons, and made preparations for a rapid
movement of his army into Virginia.
[Footnote 80: Vol. II., p. 142.]
Early in the morning I rode to the right, came upon the line by
Poffenberger's. Rations had been served; and the troops were in
position, expecting orders to move.
Colonel Andrews, commanding Gordon's brigade in Mansfield's corps, was
riding along the line. "How are your men, Colonel?"
"All right. They had a pretty hard time yesterday; but having had a
good breakfast, they feel well. We expect to advance in a few moments."
I talked with the soldiers. "We gave them a good thrashing yesterday,
and mean to drive them into the Potomac to-day," said one. The
sharpshooters were lying in the field in front of the church. All were
ready.
At noon, I rode once more along the lines. Some of the batteries
which had exhausted their ammunition in the battle had refilled their
caissons, and were waiting orders to take position. The gunners were
lying on the ground.
"Do you think there will be a battle to-day?" I asked an officer.
"O, yes. We shall be at it in a few minutes. We are all ready."
One o'clock,--the wounded men were all removed. The flag of truce had
been taken down.
Two o'clock,--and no order to begin the attack. Officers were
impatient. They wondered at the delay. I rode to Elk Ridge, and went
up the mountain's side. Beyond Sharpsburg there was a cloud of dust.
Baggage wagons were moving west. Lee's troops were in line, where they
had been in the morning, but there were some indications of a retreat.
At sunset, I looked once more from the mountain. The evidences had
increased that Lee intended to cross the Potomac.
The morning of the 19th dawned. Lee was gone! He took away all his
artillery, except one iron gun and some disabled caissons and wagons.
Riding now over all the field, I found many Rebel dead in the woods by
the church. Among them were bodies clothed in the Union blue, lying
where they fell, close up to the Rebel line.
There was one soldier whose pulse was forever still, whose eyes looked
straight toward the sky. The ground was stained with his blood, which
had flowed from a wound in his breast. Upon his countenance there was
a pleasant smile, and a brightness as if a ray of glory had fallen upon
him from heaven. His Bible was open upon his heart. I read:--
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my
soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me."
I could not discover his name. He was unknown to the living. He
belonged to a New York regiment, that was all I could learn. Doubtless
the Lord was with him when he passed through the valley.
The slaughter had been terrible in the sunken road, where French and
Richardson had charged. Across the fences, twenty thousand muskets
had flashed. Williston's, Walcott's, Owen's, and Ayer's batteries had
made terrible havoc in the ranks of Hill. Some of the enemy had fallen
towards the advancing columns; some were lying across the fence behind
them, shot while endeavoring to escape; some were killed while loading
their guns; one while tearing the cartridge with his teeth. He had died
instantly, and the cartridge was in his hand.
There was an officer still grasping his sword. He had fallen while
cheering his men, with all his muscles set, his nerves under tension,
the word of command on his lips. It was a fearful sight along that
road. It was as if a mighty mower had swept them down at a single
stroke.
Sharpsburg was full of Rebel wounded. I conversed with an officer of
Walker's command.
"I have been in all the battles before Richmond and at Manassas, but I
never experienced such a fire as you gave us yesterday," he said.
"I noticed that you lost heavily at the sunken road."
"Yes. It was a terrible slaughter. We couldn't keep our ranks closed,
and if your troops had pressed on they might have broken through our
line."
"They came pretty near it as it was, did they not?"
"Yes. We were all tired out. We got up from Harper's Ferry on the
morning of the battle. We had no supper Tuesday, marched all night, had
no breakfast, and went right into the fight as soon as we reached the
field. We have lived on green corn and apples half of the time since we
left Richmond. Half of our men are barefoot. We were in no condition to
fight. We wondered that McClellan did not renew the battle yesterday.
We expected it."
General McClellan was at the hotel, looking careworn and troubled.
Lee was beyond his reach. The army was pouring through the town. Some
soldiers cheered him as they passed, while others expressed their
dissatisfaction because Lee had escaped.
The invasion of the North was ended. Neither Washington nor Baltimore
had fallen into the hands of the Rebels. Lee had not dictated terms of
peace in Independence Square. Maryland had not responded to the call to
join the Confederacy.
The dreams indulged at the South of an uprising of the people of the
State had proved delusive. Lee had captured Harper's Ferry through
the incompetency of the commander of the place. That was the only
material advantage gained. He had won a victory at Groveton, through
the treasonable failure of General Porter to join General Pope, and the
tardiness of General McClellan's withdrawal from the Peninsula, but had
been defeated at South Mountain and Antietam.
General Lee retreated to Martinsburg and Winchester to rest his
exhausted troops. General McClellan marched to Harper's Ferry and
Berlin, on the Potomac, and went into camp. Lee could not take the
offensive. His troops were worn and disheartened. They had marched with
great rapidity; fought at Groveton; had moved on to Maryland; fought,
some of them at South Mountain, others at Harper's Ferry; had lived on
short rations, making up the lack of food with green corn. They were
barefoot and ragged. They slept without tents or blankets. They were
exposed to all the storms. The men of Georgia and Alabama and Texas
shivered with the ague in the keen air of the mountains through the
October nights. Some of them, for the first time in their lives, beheld
the beautiful spangles of the hoar-frosts. At Winchester, in the heart
of one of the loveliest and most fertile valleys in America, they were
in want of food. Lee seized all the forage and provisions he could find
among the farmers. He was obliged to wagon his supplies from Culpepper,
eighty miles distant, over roads which became muddy after a half-hour's
rain.
General McClellan, on the other hand, received his supplies by rail
within a mile or two of his camp. He thought that the army was not
in condition to undertake another campaign; nor to bring on another
battle, unless it had great advantages over the enemy.
"My present purpose," he wrote to General Halleck on the 27th, "is to
hold the army about as it is now, rendering Harper's Ferry secure, and
watching the river closely, intending to attack the enemy should he
attempt to cross."
President Lincoln visited the army, and urged General McClellan to
attack Lee. There was a favorable opportunity. Large reinforcements had
been received, and the troops were in good spirits; the weather was
favorable. Lee was far from his supplies; his army was smaller than
McClellan's. But General McClellan was not disposed to move. On the
6th of October, he received orders from General Halleck to cross the
Potomac and give battle to the enemy, or drive him south. "You must
move while the roads are good," was the telegram.
Some of the troops needed clothing, and were in want of shoes. The
cavalry were deficient of horses. Complaint was made that supplies were
withheld.
"The railroads are now embarrassed to supply you; and supplies here
wait for the return of cars detained while loaded near your position,"
was the telegram of General Meigs from Washington.
On the 10th of October, General Stuart with two thousand Rebel cavalry
crossed the Potomac, near the town of Hancock; visited Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, turned toward the east, rode round McClellan's army, and
escaped with little loss into Virginia. General McClellan's plans for
his capture failed. The army was mortified, and the people indignant;
but the raid, although nothing came of it, gave great pleasure to the
Rebels.
President Lincoln sent a friendly letter to General McClellan.
"You remember," he wrote, "my speaking to you, of what I called your
over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume, that you
cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim
to be, at least, his equal in power, and act upon the claim? As I
understand, you telegraph General Halleck, that you cannot subsist
your army at Winchester, unless the railroad from Harper's Ferry to
that point be put in working order. But the enemy does now subsist
his army at Winchester, at a distance twice as great from railroad
transportation as you would have to do without the railroad last named.
Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is to operate
upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing
your own. You seem to act as if this applies _against_ you, but cannot
apply in your _favor_. Change positions with the enemy, and think
you not, he would break your communications with Richmond within the
next twenty-four hours? You dread his going into Pennsylvania. But
if he does so in full force, he gives up his communications to you
absolutely, and you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin him;
if he does so with less than full force, fall upon and beat what is
left behind all the easier.... You know, I desired but did not order
you to cross the Potomac below, instead of above, the Shenandoah and
Blue Ridge. My idea was, that this would at once menace the enemy's
communications, which I would seize, if he would permit. If he should
move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications.
If he should prevent our seizing his communications and move toward
Richmond, I would press closely to him, fight him, if a favorable
opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on
the inside track.
"I say 'try.' If we never try we never shall succeed. If he make a
stand at Winchester, moving neither north nor south, I would fight him
there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage
of communication to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going
to him. This proposition is a simple truth, and is too important to be
lost sight of for a moment.
"As we must beat him somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at
all, easier near us, than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where
he now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of
Richmond."[81]
[Footnote 81: President's Letter.]
The army numbered one hundred and twenty-three thousand men present and
fit for duty. If General McClellan moved east of the Blue Ridge he was
to receive thirty-five thousand reinforcements from Washington, making
a total of about one hundred and sixty thousand.[82] Lee's army was
supposed to number about eighty thousand.
[Footnote 82: Adjutant-General's Report.]
General McClellan still delayed to advance. "The troops are in want
of clothing," he said. But the chief quartermaster of the army cleared
the government from all blame. "You have always very promptly met all
my requirements. I foresee no time when an army of over one hundred
thousand men will not call for clothing and other articles," was the
telegram of Colonel Ingalls to General Meigs.
Among the wounded in the hospitals at Antietam was a young soldier of
the Nineteenth Massachusetts. He was an only child of his parents. He
had been kindly nurtured, and knew nothing of hardship till he enlisted
in the army. He was very patient. He had no word of complaint. He
trusted in Jesus, and had no fear of death. His mother came from her
Massachusetts home to see him.
"Do you know that we think you cannot recover?" said the chaplain one
day to him. It did not startle him.
"I am safe. Living or dying, I am in God's hands," he calmly replied.
"Are you not sorry, my son, that you entered the army, and left home to
suffer all this?" his mother asked.
"O mother, how can you ask me such a question as that? You know I am
not sorry. I loved my country, and for her cause I came," he replied.
He wanted to be baptized. It was Sabbath morning. The soldier lay upon
a stretcher, and the weeping mother knelt by his side,--her only child.
There was some water in his canteen. The chaplain poured it upon his
marble brow, where death was soon to set his seal, and baptized him
in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Thus trusting in God and
loving his country, he passed into a better life.[83]
[Footnote 83: Report Christian Commission.]
There was another soldier who had been wounded in the leg.
Mortification set in. The surgeons told him it must be amputated. He
knew there was little chance for him to live, but calmly, as if lying
down to slumber, he went to the amputating table, singing cheerfully,
as if he were on the threshold of heaven:
"There'll be no sorrow there!
In heaven above, where all is love,
There'll be no sorrow there."
He took the chloroform, became insensible. The limb was taken off.
He never knew his loss, for after a few hours of drowsy, half-waking
slumber, his spirit passed away.