Colonel Cross, Fifth New Hampshire, by a change of front to the left and rear, brought his regiment facing the advancing line. Here a spirited contest arose to gain a commanding height, the two opposing forces moving parallel to each other, giving and receiving fire. The Fifth gaining the advantage, faced to the right and delivered its volley. The enemy staggered, but rallied and advanced desperately at a charge. Being reinforced by the Eighty-first Pennsylvania, these regiments met the advance by a counter charge. The enemy fled, leaving many killed, wounded, and prisoners, and the colors of the Fourth North Carolina, in the victors’ hands.
Another column of the enemy, advancing under shelter of a stone wall and corn-field, pressed down on the right of the division; but Colonel Barlow again advanced the Sixty-first and Sixty-fourth New York against these troops, and with the attack of Kimball’s brigade on the right, drove them from this position.
On the left of this part of the line, the Union troops having driven back a determined attack of the enemy, the rebels made a rush upon the front, but were fiercely repulsed by two regiments under Colonel Barlow, who followed them through the corn-field and into the orchard beyond. A building called Riper’s house was a strong point here; and Colonel Barlow’s advance gave the Union men possession of it, and they at once occupied it. A section of Robertson’s horse battery now arrived, and in good time, for Richardson’s division up to that juncture had been without artillery; and subsequently Captain Graham, First Artillery, commanding a battery of brass guns, arrived, and taking a position on the crest of the hill, soon silenced the enemy’s guns in the orchard. Heavy firing began immediately; and while directing the firing of Captain Graham’s battery, the gallant Richardson was mortally wounded. The place of General Richardson was supplied by General Hancock. Colonel Bunke, of the Sixty-third New York, commanding General Meagher’s brigade, was ordered to the centre.
The battle raged with uninterrupted fury; and on right and left, rebels and Unionists strewed the ground with gory corpses. The groans and cries of the wounded and dying filling up every interval of the battle’s roar. Dark and darker grew the aspect of affairs. The different battle-fields were shut out from each other’s view, but all were visible from a centre hill, from which General McClellan, during the whole day, with his field-glass held to his eyes, watched eagerly and anxiously the fighting of the several brave corps under his command.
The afternoon was waning; and things looked very black for the Army of the Union. At three o’clock General McClellan issued an order to General Burnside to push forward his troops with all possible vigor, and carry the enemy’s position on the heights. General Burnside replied that he would advance up the hill as far as he could, before being stopped by a battery, placed directly in his path. Upon hearing this, General McClellan ordered Burnside to flank the battery, storm it, and carry the heights.
The advance was made most gallantly, the enemy utterly routed, and the heights carried triumphantly. Night was now approaching, and the enemy was receiving strong reinforcements from Harper’s Ferry. General Burnside’s troops were attacked on the left flank, and obliged to retire to a lower line of hills, near the bridge and the question as to whether the well-won position on the heights could be maintained, became a problem of vital importance. Burnside’s brigades were in close columns, and would not give way before a bayonet charge; and the enemy hesitated to dash in on the dense masses of Union soldiers. Then suddenly the rebel left gave way, scattering over the field, but the rest stood firm, and poured forth a heavy fire upon the Federals. More infantry came up, and General Burnside found himself outnumbered, outflanked, and compelled to yield up the position he fought so bravely to win. He no longer attacked; but, with unfaltering firmness, defended himself, and sent to General McClellan for help.
McClellan already knew of the sore strait to which Burnside was reduced, for his glass had not been turned away from the hard-pressed left of the field; but to send assistance was out of his power. In the valley, Porter’s fifteen thousand troops were impatient to join the fight; but when the two Generals, McClellan and Porter, looked into each other’s faces, each read in the other’s eyes, “They are the only reserves of the army—they cannot be spared.” As an answer to General Burnside’s desire for reinforcements, the Commander-in-Chief was obliged to reply:
“Tell General Burnside this is the battle of the war. He must hold his ground till dark at any cost. I will send him Miller’s battery. I can do nothing more. I have no infantry.” Then as the messenger was riding away he called him back. “Tell him if he cannot hold his ground, then the bridge, to the last man!—always the bridge! If the bridge is lost, all is lost.”
Till Burnside’s message reached McClellan, no one anticipated that the battle could be concluded on that day; and few expected how near was the peril of total defeat. But suddenly and unexpectedly, the rebels halted, instead of pushing forward, and following up the advantage gained in recapturing the hill. As the twilight deepened into darkness, the fierce, wrathful cannonading ceased, and the long, desperately-contested battle of Antietam was over. For fourteen hours nearly two hundred thousand men, and five hundred pieces of artillery had been engaged in this memorable battle. The Army of the Potomac, notwithstanding the moral depression consequent upon its late severe reverses, had achieved a great victory over an army elated by recent successes; and, on the night of September 17th, the soldiers of the Union slept in peace and triumph on a field won by dauntless bravery, and covered with the dead and wounded, friends and foes, patriots and rebels.
On both sides the casualties among officers in the battle of Antietam was unusually numerous. Among the rebel killed were Brigadier-Generals Starke and Branche, and among their wounded were Major-General Anderson, Brigadier-Generals Anderson, Lawton, Wright, Ripley, Amistead and Ransome.