The Spy of the Rebellion / Being a True History of the Spy System of the United States Army during the Late Rebellion

by Allan Pinkerton

On the morning of the sixteenth, being then at headquarters, and desiring to learn from personal observation something of the position of the enemy, I accompanied a party of cavalry sent out to reconnoitre across the Antietam. Here it was discovered that the enemy had changed the position of some of their batteries, while their left and center were upon and in front of the Sharpsburg and Hagerstown turnpike, and their extreme left rested upon the wooded heights near the cross-roads to the north.

While returning from this reconnoitering expedition, fire was opened upon us from a masked battery upon the hill, and my horse, a beautiful sorrel, that had carried me for months, and to which I was much attached, was shot from under me while I was crossing the stream. Several of the men who accompanied me were seriously wounded, and I narrowly escaped with my life.

The next morning, at early dawn, the battle commenced, and raged with unabated fury until nightfall, when the rebels withdrew, and our soldiers slept that night upon a dearly won, yet decisively victorious field. McClellan determined not to renew the attack upon the following day, for which his critics have censured him severely; yet, I am satisfied, that not a few writers, who have fought, on paper, the battle of Antietam, just as it should have been fought in their own estimation, have not, in a single instance, given the subject more painful and anxious thought than did the General himself, during all that night, while his weary troops lay resting on their arms, on a field covered with their own and their enemy's dead.

No better reasons can be assigned, and, indeed, none better need be given for the course he pursued, than he, himself, has stated in his own report of that battle. He says: "I am aware of the fact, that, under ordinary circumstances, a General is expected to risk a battle if he has a reasonable prospect of success; but at this critical juncture, I should have had a narrow view of the condition of the country, had I been willing to hazard another battle with less than an absolute assurance of success. At that moment, Virginia lost, Washington menaced, Maryland invaded, the National cause could afford no risks of defeat. One battle lost, and almost all would have been lost. Lee's army might then have marched as it pleased on Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia or New York. It could have levied its supplies from a fertile and undevastated country, extorted tribute from wealthy and populous cities, and nowhere east of the Alleghanies was there another organized force able to arrest its march."

The day after the battle, however, General McClellan gave orders for a renewal of the attack on the morning of the nineteenth; but when morning dawned, it was discovered that the rebels had suddenly abandoned their position and retreated across the river, leaving nearly three thousand of their unburied dead on the late field of battle. Thirteen guns, thirty-nine colors, upwards of fifteen thousand stand of small arms, and more than six thousand prisoners, were taken in the battles of South Mountain, Crampton's Gap and Antietam, while not a single gun or color was lost by our troops in any of these encounters.

The Battle of Antietam, in its effects, was a brilliant and decisive victory for the Union arms, as it was a terrible blow to the South, who had expected much from Lee's sudden and daring invasion of a loyal state; and their losses, from the time they first invaded Maryland until the end of the Battle of Antietam, were in the neighborhood of thirty thousand men.

Whatever, therefore, has been said by unfriendly critics, concerning General McClellan's achievements, they must be regarded by the intelligent and fair-minded student of history, as far from being failures. Nor were they merely the achievements of an ordinary man. It is an easy, and no doubt a tempting task, nearly twenty years after a battle has occurred, and with the knowledge and materials now at hand, for writers to fight this battle over again, and point out alleged blunders here and there, and in their vivid, and not always truthful, imaginations conduct affairs as they should have been conducted.

It may be safely asserted, that no General in the history of the Nation was ever so shamefully treated by his government, as was General McClellan. With a brave and noble devotion, and with a self-sacrificing love for his country and her flag, he fearlessly offered his life and his services in sustaining the honor of the one, and the perpetuity of the other.

Reviewing his career from the date of his taking command of all the armies, down to the close of the battle of Antietam, he received the bitter opposition of the Cabinet, and the ill-concealed enmity of the politicians; and scarcely had he been called to this important position, than his enemies began working to effect his downfall. With such persistence and success did they devote themselves to their task, that by the time he had his Army of the Potomac ready for the field, they had practically deposed him as the Commander-in-Chief.