The attack upon Jones on the right, coming from a whole corps, and met by his division alone, numbering less than 2,500, and the artillery on his line, gave illustration of endurance, courage and resolution seldom if ever surpassed in the annals of war. General Toombs, with his artillery and two Georgia regiments, repulsed five separate assaults by Burnside's forces, and only retired when every cartridge had been fired and his position had been turned by a passage below him. Just at the moment when Jones was driven back upon the town and the corps of General Burnside under General Cox was sweeping up on his front and right and making for a lodgment on the Shepherdstown road in his rear, Lee's line of retreat, the division of A. P. Hill, which had been marching all day, reported on Jones' right and formed forward into battle. This arrival saved the day.
Hill placed his batteries rapidly and opened with canister; but before his infantry could be formed the enemy had charged the guns and captured McIntosh's battery and flag. Not a moment was to be lost if Lee's line to Shepherdstown was to be saved, and A. P. Hill and Jones ordered the charge. "My troops were not in a moment too soon," says Hill. With a yell of defiance Archer charged [with Toombs] recaptured McIntosh's battery and drove the enemy pell-mell down the slope; Gregg and Branch, from Archer's left, poured in a deadly fire as they steadily moved down the slope, and the whole line of attack broke and retired to the Antietam. Night settled down upon the battlefield of Antietam and the bloodiest struggle of the war was over.
Gregg's casualties were 163 killed and wounded, of which the First lost 4 killed and 30 wounded; Orr's Rifles, 3 killed and 9 wounded; Twelfth, 20 killed and 82 wounded; Thirteenth, 1 killed and 14 wounded. The Fourteenth was not engaged.
The brave and accomplished Col. Dixon Barnes, of the Twelfth, fell mortally wounded. Lieut. Archibald McIntire, of the First, and Capt. F. A. Irwin and Lieut. J. B. Blackman, of the Twelfth, were killed. Capt. M. P. Parker, of the First; Capts. J. L. Miller and H. C. Davis and Lieut. R. M. Carr, of the Twelfth; Lieuts. J. M. Wheeler and W. L. Litzsey, of the Thirteenth, and Capt. James Perrin, commanding Orr's Rifles, were wounded.
Space does not permit a review of this great battle. It was a gigantic struggle of eighteen hours. General McClellan referred to it as a mighty contest in which 200,000 men contended for mastery! General Lee reported it as a protracted and sanguinary conflict in which every effort of the enemy to dislodge him from his position had been defeated with severe loss. The battle was not renewed on the 18th. General McClellan, reporting to his government, said that a sense of duty to the army and the country forbade a renewal of the fight on the 18th without reinforcements, the probabilities of defeat being too great. Whatever General McClellan's strength, it is certain General Lee fought around Sharpsburg with less than 40,000 men of all arms. When Lee was at Frederickstown, his army numbered, by its returns, in round numbers, 61,000 of all arms. The battles of Boonsboro, Crampton's Gap and Harper's Ferry, with the cavalry engagements, followed. These, of course, reduced the fighting force, but his heaviest losses were from straggling incident to the rapid marches and the actual suffering of the troops for the want of sleep and food between Boonsboro and Sharpsburg. The remarks of Gen. D. H. Hill will apply to most of the divisions. He says:
My ranks had diminished by straggling, and on the morning of the 17th I had but 3,000 infantry.... Our wagons had been sent off across the river on Sunday, and for three days the men had been sustaining life on green corn and such cattle as they could kill in the field. In charging through an apple orchard with the immediate prospect of death before them, I noticed men eagerly devouring apples.... Had all our stragglers been up, McClellan's army would have been completely crushed.
In leaving the battlefield of Sharpsburg, the writer pauses to pay a tribute of respect and love to a brave and accomplished soldier, his preceptor at the South Carolina military academy, and his honored friend. Col. Charles Courtney Tew, the gallant commander of the Second North Carolina, in Anderson's brigade of D. H. Hill's division, fell at the head of his regiment in Hill's defense of the center against the attack of Richardson in the afternoon. After graduating at the head of the first class to leave the South Carolina military academy, Colonel Tew became one of its able and distinguished professors. Removing to North Carolina, he established a military academy at Hillsboro, and when the time came for battle he was at the head of the second regiment raised in the old North State. Modest, resolute, sincere, devoted to study and to work, he was an accomplished scholar, a true and noble spirit, and a resolute character. General Hill said of him, while reporting his ability and gallantry, and lamenting his loss: "He had no superior as a soldier in the field." Knowing him well, we can understand how his efficiency at the head of a regiment and his fine attainments as a soldier, would make such an impression upon his major-general. How many such men did the South yield up in willing and costly sacrifice on the altar of Southern independence!
The last guns of the Maryland campaign of 1862 were fired at Shepherdstown and by the cavalry in front of Williamsport, on the 20th of September. In both these actions South Carolina troops took part, under Generals Gregg and Hampton. General Lee's army was behind the Opequon on the 19th; that of McClellan was threatening the passages of the Potomac. The cavalry under Stuart, with Hampton's brigade in advance, had moved up the right bank of the Potomac and crossed into Maryland, at Williamsport, to watch and threaten the enemy's right and rear. Advancing from Williamsport, Hampton met a strong force of all arms sent to oppose Stuart, successfully skirmished with it all day of the 20th, and recrossed the river into Virginia without loss at night.
On the evening of the 19th, General Porter with the Federal Fifth corps was at the Shepherdstown ford, with his artillery on the Maryland hills and his sharpshooters lining the left flank. Under cover of his artillery, he successfully crossed a portion of his command, stormed the position on the Virginia side, drove off the infantry force of 600 men, and captured four guns of General Pendleton's artillery. Early on the 20th, A. P. Hill was sent with his division to drive Porter's force back and hold the crossing. In executing this command General Hill fought the battle of Shepherdstown.
General Porter in his report represents the attack of General Hill to have been made upon two of his brigades, and a part of a third, who, by his order, recrossed the river, under the cover of his batteries, with little injury, except to the One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania regiment. He gives as the reason for his retrograde movement that the enemy (Hill) was reported as advancing in force. Reading the Federal general's report, one not conversant with the facts would naturally suppose that Hill's division met the Pennsylvania regiment alone in actual battle, and as Porter says that this regiment became "confused" early in the action, and their arms were ineffective, it would appear that Hill had little to do.