When these arrangements had been made, I rode to the position Burnside had selected for himself, which was upon a high knoll northeast of the Burnside bridge, near a haystack which was a prominent landmark. Near by was Benjamin's battery of twenty-pounder Parrotts, and a little further still to the right, on the same ridge, General Sturgis had sent in Durell's battery. [Footnote: Ibid.] These were exchanging shots with the enemy's guns opposite, and had the advantage in range and weight of metal. At this point I remained until the order for our attack came, later in the day. We anxiously watched what we could see at the right, and noted the effect of the fire of the heavy guns of Benjamin's battery. We could see nothing distinctly that occurred beyond the Dunker Church, for the East and West Woods with farm-houses and orchards between made an impenetrable screen. A column of smoke stood over the burning Mumma house, marking plainly its situation.
As the morning wore on, we saw lines of troops advancing from our right upon the other side of the Antietam, and engaging the enemy between us and the East Wood. The Confederate lines facing them now also rose into view. From our position we looked, as it were, down between the opposing lines as if they had been the sides of a street, and as the fire opened we saw wounded men carried to the rear and stragglers making off. Our lines halted, and we were tortured with anxiety as we speculated whether our men would charge or retreat. The enemy occupied lines of fences and stone walls, and their batteries made gaps in the National ranks. Our long-range guns were immediately turned in that direction, and we cheered every well-aimed shot. One of our shells blew up a caisson close to the Confederate line. This contest was going on, and it was yet uncertain which would succeed, when one of McClellan's staff rode up with an order to Burnside. The latter turned to me, saying we were ordered to make our attack. I left the hill-top at once to give personal supervision to the movement ordered, and did not return to it. My knowledge by actual vision of what occurred on the right ceased.
The question at what hour Burnside received this order, has been warmly disputed. The manner in which we had waited, the free discussion of what was occurring under our eyes and of our relation to it, the public receipt of the order by Burnside in the usual and business-like form, all forbid the supposition that this was any reiteration of a former order.
[Footnote: I leave this as originally written, although the order itself has since come to light; for the discussion of the circumstantial evidence may be useful in determining the value of McClellan's report of 1863 where it differs in other respects from his original report of 1862 and from other contemporaneous documents.
"HEAD-QUARTERS, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
September 17, 1862,--9.10 A. M.
MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE:
GENERAL,--General Franklin's command is within one mile and a half of here. General McClellan desires you to open your attack. As soon as you shall have uncovered the upper stone bridge you will be supported, and, if necessary, on your own line of attack. So far all is going well.
Respectfully, GEO. D. RUGGLES, Colonel, etc."
This order appears in the supplementary volume of the Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 844. From Pry's house, where McClellan's headquarters were that day, to Burnside's, was over two miles as the crow flies. This establishes the accuracy of the original reports of both, which stated the hour of receipt at ten o'clock. It corroborates also the time of Franklin's arrival on the field, and the connection of this with Burnside's advance.]
If then we can determine whose troops we saw engaged, we shall know something of the time of day; for there has been a general agreement reached as to the hours of movement of Sumner's divisions during the forenoon on the right and right centre. The official map settles this. No lines of our troops were engaged in the direction of Bloody Lane and the Rullett farm-house, and between the latter and our station on the hill, till French's division made its attack. We saw them distinctly on the hither side of the farm buildings, upon the open ground, considerably nearer to us than the Dunker Church or the East Wood. In number we took them to be a corps. The place, the circumstances, all fix it beyond controversy that they were French's men or French's and Richardson's. No others fought on that part of the field until Franklin went to their assistance at noon or later. The incident of their advance and the explosion of the caisson was illustrated by the pencil of Mr. Forbes on the spot, and was placed by him at the time Franklin's head of column was approaching from the direction of Rohrersville, which was about ten o'clock. [Footnote: Forbes's sketch is reproduced in "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," vol. ii. p. 647, and is of historical importance in connection with the facts stated above.]
It seems now very clear that about ten o'clock in the morning was the great crisis in this battle. The sudden and complete rout of Sedgwick's division was not easily accounted for, and, with McClellan's theory of the enormous superiority of Lee's numbers, it looked as if the Confederate general had massed overwhelming forces on our right. Sumner's notion that Hooker's corps was utterly dispersed was naturally accepted, and McClellan limited his hopes to holding on at the East Wood and the Poffenberger hill, where Hooker's batteries were massed and supported by the troops that had been rallied there. Franklin's corps, as it came on the field, was detained to support the threatened right centre, and McClellan determined to help it further by a demonstration upon the extreme left by the Ninth Corps. At this time, therefore, he gave his order to Burnside to cross the Antietam and attack the enemy, thus creating a diversion in favor of our hard-pressed right. His preliminary report of the battle (dated October 16, 1862) explicitly states that the order to Burnside to attack was "communicated to him at ten o'clock A.M." This exactly agrees with the time stated by Burnside in his official report, and would ordinarily be quite conclusive. [Footnote: See note, p. 334, ante. C. W., pt. i. p. 41; Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 31, 416.]
In the book published in 1864 as his official report of his whole military career, McClellan says he ordered Burnside to make this attack at eight o'clock. The circumstances under which his final published statements were made take away from them the character of a calm and judicial correction of his first report. He was then a general set aside from active service and a political aspirant to the Presidency. His book was a controversial one, issued as an argument to the public, and the earlier report must be regarded in a military point of view as the more authoritative unless good grounds are given for the changes. When he wrote his preliminary report he certainly knew the hour and the condition of affairs on the field when he gave the order to Burnside. To do so at eight o'clock would not accord with his plan of battle. [Footnote: Id., pp. 30, 55.] His purpose had been to move the Ninth Corps against the enemy "when matters looked favorably" on our right, after an attack by Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner, supported, if necessary, by Franklin. But Sumner's attack was not made till after nine, and Franklin's head of column did not reach the field till ten. McClellan's book, indeed, erroneously postpones Franklin's arrival till past noon, which, if true, would tend to explain why the day wore away without any further activity on the right; but the preliminary report better agrees with Franklin's when it says that officer reached the field about an hour after Sedgwick's disaster. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 30, 61, 376.]
Still further, matters had at no time "looked favorably" on the right up to ten o'clock. The condition, therefore, which was assumed as precedent to Burnside's movement, never existed; and this was better known to McClellan than to any one else, for he received the first discouraging reports after Mansfield fell, and the subsequent alarming ones when Sedgwick was routed. Burnside's report was dated on the 30th of September, within two weeks of the battle, and at a time when public discussion of the incomplete results of the battle was animated. It was made after he had in his hands my own report as his immediate subordinate, in which I had given about nine o'clock as my remembrance of the time. [Footnote: Id., p. 424.] As I directed the details of the action at the bridge in obedience to this order, it would have been easy for him to have accepted the hour named by me, for I should have been answerable for any delay in execution after that time. But he then had in his possession the order which came to him upon the hill-top overlooking the field, and no officer in the whole army has a better established reputation for candor and freedom from any wish to avoid full personal responsibility for his acts. It was not till his report was published in the Official Records (1887) [Footnote:Id., p. 416.] that I saw it or learned its contents, although I enjoyed his personal friendship down to his death. He was content to have stated the fact as he knew it, and did not feel the need of debating it. The circumstances have satisfied me that his accuracy in giving the hour was greater than my own. [Footnote: Upon reflection, I think it probable that the order from McClellan was read to me, and that I thus got the hour of its date connected in my mind with the beginning of our attack.]