Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

CHAPTER XV.

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.

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 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.

THE TWENTY-SECOND NEW YORK NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.

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) 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 of 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.

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 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.

THE CHARGE ACROSS THE BURNSIDE BRIDGE.

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 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.

THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE WAR—THE NEGRO AND COTTON.