This is part 3 in a series about the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history and, more importantly, the battle that changed the purpose of the Civil War. Part 1, found here, describes how George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, accidentally learned the position of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on its invasion of the North and moved, albeit not briskly, to trap it. Part 2, here, relates how McClellan’s delays allowed Lee to regroup along Antietam Creek in western Maryland and how Abraham Lincoln hoped for a Union victory so he could make a bold announcement.  

On the morning of September 17, 1862, Lee’s army was arrayed in a rough arc north and east of the town of Sharpsburg. The far left, held by Major General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, reached the eastern bank of the Potomac River. Next came most of Stonewall Jackson’s infantry, holding woods on a slight ridge west of a small, white church belonging to the pacifist Dunkers. In front of the church stood a cornfield, stalks still high. 

To the right of these troops was the center of the Confederate line, D.H. Hill’s division, positioned along a lane sunken below the level of the ground from which the Federals would attack. The Sunken Road both hid and protected Hill’s men. During the morning, they were reinforced by Richard Anderson’s division, after arriving from Harpers Ferry. 

To Hill’s right were the divisions of Major General James Longstreet, with the far right anchored on high ground above Antietam Creek. That position put men in firing range of a bridge over the creek. 

McClellan planned to throw his main weight—three of the six corps in his army—at the Confederate left, by the Dunker Church. The three corps commanders to lead this attack were Major Generals Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker, Joseph Mansfield, and Edwin Sumner. McClellan wanted a fourth corps, under Ambrose Burnside, to attack the Confederate right. He hoped that Burnside’s action would pin down Longstreet’s men sufficiently to prevent Lee from using any of those troops to reinforce Jackson. 

Another Union corps, under Fitz-John Porter, was held in the center in reserve. The sixth, under William Franklin, was still not on the scene as the day began. 

Unfortunately, McClellan never told Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner to advance simultaneously, so they attacked sequentially, robbing what would have been a massive assault of its punch. He also failed to instruct Burnside to attack early and energetically. The much-bewhiskered general did not get his troops moving until late morning, long after the fighting by the Dunker Church had begun.   

The morning was chill and gray as the September sun began to rise. Mist spotted the highlands, fog filled the hollows. There was the early hush of a late summer morn. It might have been, another year, a good day for harvesting. Not this day, though, as tens of thousands of men crowded into a few square miles began to rouse.  

Slowly, as the sun emerged and the mist evaporated, pickets on watch began to pepper fire at anything moving on the other side. Then, from the north end of the still green space, came the rumbling of thousands of feet.   

At dawn, Hooker moved his three divisions forward. Heading south astride a road that led to Sharpsburg, they aimed to seize the high ground where the Dunker Church stood. They took heavy fire as they advanced, though, some of it coming from the cornfield. Hooker halted and had his artillery blast away at the 40-acre field. “Every stalk in . . . the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife,” he later wrote. 

Despite the intense bombardment, the Union troops again drew fire when they resumed their advance. They had slow going through the tall stalks, fired upon by shadowy figures standing in their own rows, while their fellows, in the open, were struck by fire and cannon shot from the woods. Hooker’s advance stalled. Finally, some of his troops fought their way through the cornfield and could see the Dunker Church. Then, Jackson unleashed Brigadier General John Bell Hood and his Texans in a furious counterattack. When the Confederates fired into the Union troops, “[it] was like a scythe running through our line,” remembered one Union soldier. After two hours of fighting, his corps shattered, Hooker withdrew.  

Mansfield then launched his divisions, moving toward the cornfield from the east. The force of this attack drove Hood’s men, outnumbered, back through the cornfield, though they put up what resistance they could. (Indiana Corporal Barton Mitchell, who back on the 13th had found the orders D.H. Hill had lost, was wounded in this fight. Mansfield was less fortunate—he was wounded early in the advance and died of that wound.) Once again, though, when they neared the church the Union troops were driven back. This time, the counterattack came from reinforcements Lee had pulled from his right. Just as McClellan had feared, Lee had robbed from “Old Pete” Longstreet to pay Jackson. 

Now it was Edwin Sumner’s turn to test the Confederate left. One of his three divisions advanced over open ground to the south of Mansfield’s route. The 65-year-old Sumner led the way, keeping his men in tight formation—which meant they offered easy targets to the division led by Major General Lafayette McLaws, arrived not long before from Harpers Ferry. McLaws’s fearsome fire inflicted as many as 2,000 casualties on Sumner’s troops in just half an hour. A Massachusetts soldier later wrote that “the loss of life was fearful; we had never seen anything like it.” (Among the wounded was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future Supreme Court justice.) Shaken, Sumner withdrew. 

Five hours of fighting left some 7,000 Union soldiers and 5,000 Confederates dead or wounded. The Confederates had twice been on the verge of being overrun. Twice they had escaped.  

The fighting moved to the center. Two of Sumner’s divisions had headed not northwest, toward the cornfield and Dunker Church, but southwest, toward the center of the Confederate line, held by D.H. Hill and Anderson. The oncoming Union soldiers quite a sight, according to one Southern officer: “Their gleaming bayonets flashed like burnished silver in the sunlight. With the precision of step and perfect alignment of a holiday parade this magnificent array moved to the charge, every step keeping time to the tap of the deep-sounding drum.” 

The pretty picture did not last. Hill’s and Anderson’s hidden men raked the oncoming line with fire. They did the same to the next Union brigade, and the next, and the one that followed.

Suddenly, though, the Confederate center became imperiled. Confusion over an order caused those on the left of this line to pull back, toward Sharpsburg. Union troops poured into the gap and fired down the road at the suddenly exposed Confederates. What had been the Sunken Road got a new name: Bloody Lane. The remaining Confederates broke back toward town. 

Hill frantically patched together a new line and urgently called for reinforcements, but none were to be had. Longstreet did send over some of his artillery, which blasted at the Union troops. The battle—and Lee’s army—was on the brink.  

Seeing opportunity, young William Franklin, now on the scene with several thousand fresh troops, chafed to attack the makeshift Confederate line. Sumner, with three divisions shot to pieces, had had his fill of fighting. McClellan listened to the two generals’ arguments, viewed the field, and agreed with Sumner. He told Franklin to stay put. The fighting in the center was done.

The third phase of the battle took place on the Confederate right. Burnside had dithered, focusing on what is now wryly called “Burnside’s Bridge,” the one sure, but perilous, way across Antietam Creek and toward the Southern troops on the high ground beyond it. For some reason, he did not send scouts looking for another way across the creek until late morning, when he finally dispatched some to the south to look for a ford. (They eventually found two.)

In the meantime, he squandered the morning in two attempts to send units across the bridge, which were foiled by Union ineptness (one commander was unable to find the bridge) and Southern sharpshooters and cannon fire. McClellan, with growing frustration, sent several couriers telling Burnside to attack.  

The last of these aides came about noon—after the fighting on the Confederate left had ended— and delivered the message of urgency to which Burnside finally responded. Orders reached Colonel Edward Ferrero, who told two regiments, the 51st Pennsylvania and 51st New York, that it was Burnside’s “especial request” that they take the bridge. “Will you do it?” he challenged. 

A Pennsylvania private alertly countered with his own question: “Will you give us our whiskey, Colonel, if we make it?” Ferrero, it seems, had withheld the whiskey ration that under army regulations was discretionary but to his soldiers was apparently a necessity. With a laugh, Ferrero agreed.  

Under heavy covering fire from other Union units, the regiments dashed for the bridge in two parallel columns, reached it, ran across it, spread into battle lines, and moved up the ridge toward the Confederates. It was a neat piece of work, helped, perhaps, by the timing. The Georgians who held that ridge were nearly out of ammunition by now. They began to pull back.  

Once again, Lee’s army was on the brink. Only about 2,500 Confederate infantry and a few scattered gun batteries held his right. If the Union forces could sweep away this pitiful Confederate force, they could quickly move through Sharpsburg and seize the only ford across the Potomac, a mile to the rear. If so, Lee’s army would be trapped.  

Surveying the scene from his headquarters in Sharpsburg, Lee saw the looming disaster. Worse, he also saw the Union division that had finally forded the creek on its way from the southeast. 

But he also saw a column of dust rising from the southwest—a column of troops carrying Confederate flags. They were A.P. Hill’s men, the last of the troops that had been at Harpers Ferry, who had marched north quick-time upon receiving Lee’s summons that morning.  

More ineptness on the other side came to Lee’s aid once more. Another brigade was sent across the bridge to follow the twin 51sts, only to find it had no ammunition. Time—nearly two hours after the bridge had been taken—was lost bringing up new troops with full cartridge boxes.  

By three in the afternoon, they were poised to score a crushing blow. When the Union soldiers finally staged their new advance, though, Hill’s soldiers were on the scene and coming at them. Many of Hill’s men wore Union blue—uniforms they had seized at Harpers Ferry—and that appearance caused the oncoming Northerners to stop. Then Hill’s men let loose a withering volley, sending the Union soldiers reeling. Hill’s men raked four successive regiments with fire.  

Burnside, beaten, called off any further fighting. Instead, he begged McClellan for reinforcements.  

Lee had only a few thousand troops on his right. McClellan had four divisions, Porter’s and Franklin’s men, who had not yet fought. With visions of Lee counterattacking or marching off to wreak havoc in the North, McClellan refused to commit them. 

And with a fiery sunset, the terrible day ended.  

Words © 2010 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.