The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on September 17, 1862, climaxed
the first of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s two attempts to carry the
war into the North. About 40,000 Southerners were pitted against the
87,000-man Federal Army of the Potomac under Gen. George B. McClellan.
And when the fighting ended, the course of the American Civil War had
been greatly altered.
After his great victory at Manassas in August, Lee had marched his Army
of Northern Virginia into Maryland, hoping to find vitally needed men
and supplies. McClellan followed, first to Frederick (where through rare
good fortune a copy of the Confederate battle plan, Lee’s Special Order
No. 191, fell into his hands), then westward 12 miles to the passes of
South Mountain. There on September 14, at Turner’s, Fox’s, and
Crampton’s gaps, Lee tried to block the Federals. But because he had
split his army to send troops under Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson
to capture Harpers Ferry, Lee could only hope to delay the Northerners.
McClellan forced his way through, and by the afternoon September 15 both
armies had established new battlelines west and east of Antietam Creek
near the town of Sharpsburg. When Jackson’s troops reached Sharpsburg on
the 16th, Harpers Ferry having surrendered the day before, Lee
consolidated his position along the low ridge that runs north and south
of the town.
[Illustration: “War is a dreadful thing.... Oh, my God, can’t this
civil strife be brought to an end.”
Clara Barton, who tended the wounded at Antietam during and after
the battle.]
The battle opened at dawn on the 17th when Union Gen. Joseph Hooker’s
artillery began a murderous fire on Jackson’s men in the Miller
cornfield north of town. “In the time I am writing,” Hooker reported,
“every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was
cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay
in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments
before.” Hooker’s troops advanced, driving the Confederates before them,
and Jackson reported that his men were “exposed for near an hour to a
terrific storm of shell, canister, and musketry.”
About 7 a.m. Jackson was reenforced and succeeded in driving the
Federals back. An hour later Union troops under Gen. Joseph Mansfield
counterattacked and by 9 o’clock had regained some of the lost ground.
Then, in an effort to extricate some of Mansfield’s men from their
isolated position near the Dunker Church, Gen. John Sedgwick’s division
of Edwin V. Sumner’s corps advanced into the West Woods. There
Confederate troops struck Sedgwick’s men on both flanks, inflicting
appalling casualties.
[Illustration: “I have always had a high opinion of General
McClellan, and have no reason to suppose that he failed to
accomplish anything that he was able to do.”