Jackson Prepares an Ambush
By 9 a.m., 3 hours of killing had passed. The Miller cornfield had become a no-mans’ land, its tall stalks trampled to the ground and strewn with blood-soaked corpses. Firing had been so intense, had so fouled the men’s muskets, that some of them were using rocks to pound their ramrods home.
For a moment, the fighting ceased. Then powerful reserves were rushed forward by commanders of both armies to renew the battle.
Jackson was in extreme danger. Greene’s Federals still lurked near the Dunker Church, waiting only for support to renew their attack on the frayed Confederate line. And at this very moment a mass of blue-clad infantry could be seen emerging from the East Woods half a mile away—it was part of Sumner’s II Corps moving up for the morning’s third major Federal attack.
Swiftly Jackson gathered together reinforcements from other sectors of the battlefield. Some had just arrived from Harpers Ferry; these were McLaws’ men. With hardly a pause they moved north and disappeared into the West Woods. Lee ordered Walker’s two brigades north from the Lower Bridge; they too disappeared into the West Woods. Thus they came, racing from far and near.
As soon as they came in, Jackson craftily placed these men behind the rocks and ridges at the western fringe of the woods. Soon they formed a great semicircle whose outer points perfectly encompassed the 5,000 men in Sumner’s approaching column. Ten thousand Confederates were there. Now they disappeared into the landscape and waited.
Knap’s Independent Pennsylvania Battery “E” supported Mansfield’s corps. Courtesy, National Archives.
Sumner’s II Corps, under orders to support the attack on the Confederate left, had prepared at dawn to cross Antietam Creek at Pry’s Mill Ford. Impatiently, Sumner had awaited the signal to march while the battle raged with increasing violence on the ridge beyond the stream. Finally, at 7:30 a.m., he led Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s division across the ford. Brig. Gen. William French’s division followed, but soon drifted to the south and lost contact with Sedgwick.
