The fire was raging fearfully in front of Sumner; but Hooker's and Mansfield's cannon were silent, cooling their brazen lips after the morning's fever. In the hollow behind the ridge, east of Poffenberg's house, the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps—what was left of them—were lying, sad, yet not disheartened. How changed from what they were a year before, then fifteen thousand strong!
"We cannot lose many more," said one, as I talked of the morning's action. Gibbons's brigade, of Hooker's corps, had crossed the turnpike, and was holding the ground in the woods between it and the Potomac.
Ascending the ridge, I came upon Battery B, Fourth Artillery, also Cooper's and Easton's Pennsylvania batteries, the New Hampshire Ninth and Rhode Island Fifth,—thirty pieces bearing on the cornfield and the wood-crowned hill, where, alas! a thousand of as brave men as ever breathed were lying, who just before had moved to meet the enemy.
The firing was hot and heavy a few rods south.
The fight began with the pickets in the night, and was taken up by the artillery at daylight. The Rebels had concentrated a heavy force on their left, we on our right, because the lay of the land required it, the right being our strongest ground, and their left their weakest. The ridge behind Poffenberg's house was the door-post on which our fortunes hinged. Not so with them,—theirs was a double door, its hinge being in the woods bordering the turnpike south of the toll-house.
Hooker gave Meade, with the Pennsylvania Reserves, the right, Ricketts the left, and placed Doubleday in support in rear. Mansfield joined Hooker's left, but was an hour behind time. Sumner was slow to come into action. Hooker advanced, drove in the Rebel pickets, found a Rebel battery on his extreme right, which, as soon as he came within its range began to plough him with a flanking fire. Meade obliqued to the right, poured in a few volleys, and drove the enemy across the turnpike. This was the extreme left of the enemy's line. Hooker crossed the turnpike a few rods north of Poffenberg's, marched through the fields to the ridge by the cornfield. Having obtained possession of the ridge east of Poffenberg's, he planted his batteries and opened a fierce cannonade upon the Rebels.
The ground in front of Hooker was the scene of repeated struggles. In the afternoon the Rebels made a desperate attempt to regain what they had lost. They came down through the cornfield, west of the turnpike, under cover of their batteries. Hooker, Dana, Sedgwick, Hartsuff, Richardson, and Mansfield, all general officers, had been carried from the field wounded. General Howard was in command of the right wing. I was talking with him, when an officer dashed up and said, "General, the Rebels are coming down on us."
We were in the open field, a few rods southeast of Poffenberg's barn. General Howard rode forward a few steps, looked through the leafy branches of the oaks along the turnpike. We could see the dark lines of the enemy moving through the cornfield. "Tell the batteries to give them the heaviest fire possible," he said. It was spoken as deliberately as if he had said to his servant, "Bring me a glass of water." How those thirty pieces of artillery opened! Crack! crack! crack! and then a volley by artillery! How those gray lines wavered, swayed to and fro, and melted away!
In Poffenberg's door-yard, along the turnpike, were two noble horses, both killed by the same cannon-shot, smashing the head of one and tearing the neck of the other. The dead of the Pennsylvania Reserves laid under the palings of the garden fence. The gable of the house was torn to pieces by a shell. In the field in front dead men in blue and dead men in gray were thickly strown; and still farther out, along the narrow lane which runs southwest from the house, they were as thick as the withered leaves in autumn. How the battle-storm howled through those woods, fiercer than the blasts of November! It was a tornado which wrenched off the trunks of oaks large enough for a ship's keelson,—riving them, splintering them with the force of a thunderbolt.
If the blow which Hooker gave had been a little more powerful,—if Mansfield had been ordered in at the same instant with Hooker,—if Sumner had fallen upon the Rebel centre at the same time,—there can be but little doubt as to what would have been the result. But the battle of Antietam was fought by piecemeal. Hooker exhausted his strength before Mansfield came up; Mansfield was repulsed before Sumner came in; while Burnside, who had the most difficult task of all, was censured by McClellan for not carrying the bridge early in the morning. Yet Franklin, who arrived at noon, was only partially engaged, while Porter was ordered to stand a silent spectator through the day. The several corps of the Union army were like untrained teams of horses,—each pulled with all its strength, but no two succeeded in pulling together.