While Dick and his comrades were waiting through the long morning hours, Lee and Jackson and his other lieutenants were deciding whether or not they should make an attack of their own. But when they studied with their glasses the Northern lines and the great batteries, they decided that it would be better not to try it.
When noon came and still no shot had been fired, Colonel Winchester shook his head.
“We might yet destroy the Southern army,” he said to Dick, “but I'm convinced that General McClellan will not move it.”
The hot afternoon passed, and then the night came with the sound of rumbling wheels and marching men. Dick surmised that Lee was leaving the peninsula, and, crossing the Potomac in to Virginia, and that therefore tactical victory would rest with the Northern side. The noises continued all night long, but McClellan made no advance, nor did he do so the next day, while the whole Confederate army was crossing the Potomac, until nearly night.
But the Winchester regiment and several more of the same skeleton character, pushing forward a little on the morning of that day, found that the last Confederate soldier was gone from Sharpsburg. Colonel Winchester and other officers were eager for the Army of the Potomac to attack the Army of Northern Virginia, while it dragged itself across the wide and dangerous ford.
But McClellan delayed again, and it was sunset when Dick saw the first sign of action. A strong division with cannon crossed the river and attacked the batteries which were covering the Southern rearguard. Four guns and prisoners were taken, but when Lee heard of it he sent back Jackson, who beat off all pursuit.
Dick and his comrades did not see this last fight, which was the dying echo of Antietam. They felt that they had defeated the enemy's purpose, but they did not rejoice over any victory. The sword of Antietam had turned back Lee and Jackson for a time and perhaps had saved the Union, but Dick was gloomy and depressed that so little had been won when they seemed to hold so much in the hollow of their hands.
This feeling spread through the whole army, and the privates, even, talked of it openly. Nobody could forget those precious two days lost before the battle. Orders No. 191 had put all the cards in their hands, but the commander had not played them.
“I feel that we've really failed,” said Warner, as they sat beside a camp fire. “The Southerners certainly fought like demons, but we ought to have been there long before Jackson came, and we ought to have whipped them, even after Jackson did come.”
“But we didn't,” said Pennington, “and so we've got the job to do all over again. You know, George, we're bound to win.”