Dead and wounded men are lying in Poffenberger's door-yard. The ground is stained with blood. Two noble white horses are there, one with his head smashed, the other with his neck torn,—both killed by the same shot. There are dead men in the turnpike. Gibbons's brigade is behind the stone wall. The toll-house is riddled with bullets. There are flattened pieces of lead among the stones. The trees are scarred. There are fragments of shells. The ground is strown with knapsacks, guns, belts, canteens, and articles dropped in the fight.
"I guess you are about near enough. This is the front line," says a soldier.
I think so, too, for the bullets are singing over our heads and past us. I go up through the woods, south of Poffenberger's, to Miller's cornfield. The contest has lost some of its fury. The Rebels have been repulsed, and both sides are taking breath.
Mansfield's corps is in the woods, east of Miller's. Sedgwick's division is in the cornfield, behind the batteries of Cothran, Woodruff, Mathews, and Thompson. The batteries are pouring a constant stream of shells into the woods beyond the church.
The Union loss has been very heavy,—Hooker, Sedgwick, Dana, Hartsuff, wounded, and Mansfield killed. Meade commands Hooker's corps, and Howard, with his one arm, commands Sedgwick's division. He lost his right arm at Fair Oaks, but he is in the saddle again. The Rebel dead are thick around the church, and in the field in front of it, and along the turnpike, mingled with those who had fallen from the Union ranks. Five times the tide of battle has swept over the ground during the morning. The officers point out the exact spot where they stood. They tell what happened.
"We stood out there, in the center of the field," says an officer of the Tenth Maine. "We came up just as Ricketts was giving way. The Rebels were outflanking him, and his troops were streaming through the cornfield. The Rebels were pushing north towards Miller's. Our line of march was towards the west, which brought us partly in rear of their line. Those dead men which you see out there belonged to the Twentieth Georgia. They were on the right of the Rebel line. We gave them a volley right into their backs. They didn't know what to make of it at first. They looked round, saw that we were in their rear, then they cut for the woods. It forced back the whole Rebel line. Just then Corporal Viele, of company K, of our regiment, and a corporal of the Second Massachusetts, dashed after them, and captured the Colonel of the Twentieth Georgia, and a lieutenant."
"And Lieutenant-Colonel Dwight, of the Second Massachusetts, captured a battle-flag," says a soldier of that regiment, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "He brought it in under a shower of bullets, waving it over his head. He got clear back to the lines, and then was wounded, they say mortally."
THE CENTER.
There was a lull in the battle after the terrible fight around the church.
General French's division, of Sumner's corps, followed Sedgwick across the Antietam. The division, after crossing the stream, turned to the left, marching through the fields towards the house of Mr. Muma. Richardson, as soon as he crossed the bridge, filed to the left, moved along the bank of the river, crossed a little brook which springs from the hillside near Rulet's, encountered Hill's skirmishers, drove them up the ravine, and formed his line under cover of a hill.