The Story of the Thirty-second Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry / Whence it came; where it went; what it saw, and what it did

by Francis J. Parker

The last peremptory order to advance and “not to stop for loss of life” produced the wished-for movement, but it was too late and too hesitating to accomplish great results.

When, at last, the heights were gained, the division of A. P. Hill had arrived to reinforce the enemy, who could also spare something from in front of our now-weakened right.

Burnside’s men fought well—gave only slowly back, and that not far. Six battalions of regulars from our corps moved to the front, joining the right of Burnside’s corps to the left of Sumner’s, and leaving our (Morell’s) division, in the rear of the advanced line, the only reserve force of McClellan’s army. One brigade was sent to the left to strengthen Burnside, and at five P. M., our own, the last, was marched toward the right, but the declining sun already showed that the contest for the day must soon be ended. Just as it reached the horizon there was one roaring feu d’enfer along both lines, and almost of a sudden the firing ceased, and the battle of the Antietam had filled its page in history. It was an important victory. By it Washington, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were relieved from menace and the country for a time was grateful.

Just as it appeared to the looker-on the battle of Antietam has been described. What happened, before our eyes has been told, without digressions, and the digressions may now be added.

The battle-field was all day long bathed in sunshine; hardly one cloud appeared to throw even a passing shadow over the fair autumnal landscape, of which the background was made up of shadowed tracts of woodland, and into which were introduced blocks of rough pasture, lawn-like vistas, rolling fields of corn ready for the harvest, with just enough of distant spire and nearer farmstead to add a look of human comfort to the natural beauty of the scene. Although the foreground and the middle distance of this picture were occupied by the various combatants—killing and maiming—wounded and dying—there was present to our sight no blemish of horror. We saw no ghastly wounds, no streams of flowing gore; we heard no groans nor sighs nor oaths of the struggle, and rarely did the sound even of southern yells or northern cheers penetrate the massive roar of ordnance to reach our ears; and yet before our eyes was fought a battle in which four thousand men were slain, and fifteen thousand more were disabled by savage wounds.

So entirely were the sadder sights of bloody war excluded from our minds, that when two men of our Regiment were badly wounded by the accidental discharge of a falling rifle, the incident created almost as much excitement as one like it might have done at a muster of militia here at home.

It must not be imagined that any one of us stood throughout that equinoctial day gazing upon the sunlit scene beyond the Antietam, for in time even the terrible events of battle fall tamely upon eye and ear. In the long pauses between the rounds of infantry fighting we sat down upon the green sward and ate our lunch, or strolled away to talk with the staff officers about the headquarters, or over to one of our other brigades to discuss the incidents of the action, or to hear or tell the news of its latest casualties.

The rank and file who had not the same liberty to stray away, and who, screened from the field by the knoll on which our batteries were planted, saw little or nothing of the fight—passed the time in chat with laugh and story, as they stood, or sat, or laid, keeping in some sort the form of the massed column which was more distinctly marked by lines of rifles in the stack. Every man of them knew that at any moment he might be called to be reaper or grain in the harvest of death so near at hand; but men cannot keep themselves strained up to the pitch of heroic thought or wearing anxiety, and so within the line of battle our men joked and laughed and talked and ate, or even slept in the warm sunshine.

No heartier laugh ever rewarded Irish wit than that which shook our sides when Guiney, the handsome Colonel of the Massachusetts 9th, bedecking himself in the gorgeous apparel of a brilliant sash, was reminded that it would make him a capital mark for the enemy’s sharp-shooters, and replied, “and wouldn’t you have me a handsome corpse?”

Early in the day, as soon as we were in position in rear of the batteries, some of our mounted officers naturally desiring to get a correct idea of the lay of the land and the order of the battle, rode at a foot pace to the summit of the knoll in front, and from their saddles were quietly examining the position of affairs through field-glasses, and pointing hither and yon as they conversed, when the chief of some rebel battery, possibly suspecting them to be big generals and high functionaries, began from two guns some practice with round shot, using the mounted officers for the bull’s-eye of the target. In their innocence they assumed that this sort of thing was a matter of course on such occasions, and for a time they went on with their observations.