After
the second battle of Bull Run, General
Robert E. Lee decided to invade Maryland
and Pennsylvania. On 10th September, 1862, he sent Thomas
Stonewall Jackson to capture the Union
Army garrison at Harper's Ferry and moved the rest of his troops
to Antietam Creek. When George McClellan
heard that the Confederate Army had been
divided, he decided to attack Lee. However, the Harper's Ferry garrison
surrendered on 15th September and some of the men were able to rejoin
Lee.
On the morning of 17th September, 1862, George
McClellan and Major General Ambrose
Burnside attacked Robert E. Lee at
Antietam. The Union Army had over 75,300
troops against 37,330 Confederate soldiers. Lee held out until Ambrose
Hill and reinforcements arrived from Harper's Ferry. The following
day Lee and his army crossed the Potomac into Virginia unhindered.
It was the most costly day of the war with the Union
Army having 2,108 killed, 9,549 wounded and 753 missing. The Confederate
Army had 2,700 killed, 9,024 wounded and 2,000 missing. As a result
of being unable to achieve a decisive victory at Antietam, Abraham
Lincoln postponed the attempt to capture Richmond.
Lincoln was also angry that George McClellan
with his superior forces had not pursued Robert
E. Lee across the Potomac.
(1)
Carl
Schurz
wrote about George
McClellan
and Antietam in his autobiography published in 1906.
On
the 17th of September, the battle of Antietam was fought, in which
McClellan might have made a victory of immense consequence, had he
not, with his usual indecision and procrastination, let slip the moments
when he could easily have beaten the divided enemy in detail. As it
was, General Lee came near being justified in calling Antietam a "drawn
battle". He withdrew almost unmolested from the presence of our
army across the Potomac.
(2)
George Smalley, New York Tribune (20th September, 1862)
Fierce
and desperate battle
between 200,000 men has raged since daylight, yet night closes on
an uncertain field. It is the greatest fight since Waterloo - all
over the field contested with an obstinacy equal even to Waterloo.
If not wholly a victory tonight, I believe it is the prelude to a
victory tomorrow. But what can be foretold of the future of a fight
which from 5 in the morning till 7 at night the best troops of the
continent have fought without decisive result?
The battle
began with the dawn. Morning found both armies just as they had slept,
almost close enough to look into each other's eyes. The left of Meades
reserves and the right of Ricketts line became
engaged at nearly the same moment, one with artillery, the other with
infantry. A battery was almost immediately pushed forward beyond the
central woods, over a plowed field, near the top of the slope where
the cornfield began. On this open field, in the corn beyond, and in
the woods which stretched forward into the broad fields, like a promontory
into the ocean, were the hardest and deadliest struggles of the day.
For half
an hour after the battle had grown to its full strength, the line
of fire swayed neither way. Hooker's men were
fully up to their work. They saw their General everywhere in front,
never away from the fire, and all the troops believed in their commander,
and fought with a will. Two-thirds of them were the same men who under
McDowell had broken at Manassas.
The half hour passed,
the Rebels began to give way a little, only a little, but at the first
indication of a receding fire, Forward, was the word, and on went
the line with a cheer and a rush. Back across the cornfield, leaving
dead and wounded behind them, over the fence, and across the road,
and then back again into the dark woods which closed around them,
went the retreating Rebels.
Meade and his Pennsylvanians
followed hard and fast - followed till they came within easy range
of the woods,
among which they saw their beaten enemy disappearing - followed still,
with another cheer, and flung themselves against the cover.
But out of those glooms
woods came suddenly and heavily terrible volleys - volleys which smote,
and bent, and broke
in a moment that eager front, and hurled them swiftly back for half
the distance they had won. Not swiftly, nor in panic, any further.
Closing up their shattered lines, they came slowly away - a regiment
where a brigade had been, hardly a brigade where a whole division
had been victorious. They had met from the woods the first volleys
of musketry from fresh troops - had met them and returned them till
their line had yielded and gone down before the weight of fire, and
till their ammunition was exhausted.
In ten minutes the fortune
of the day seemed to have changed - it was the Rebels now who were
advancing; pouring out
of the woods in endless lines, sweeping through the cornfield from
which their comrades had just fled. Hooker sent in his nearest
brigade to meet them, but it could not do the work. He called for
another. There was nothing close enough, unless he took it from his
right. His right might be in danger if it was weakened, but his center
was already threatened with annihilation. Not hesitating one moment,
he sent to Doubleday: "Give me your best brigade instantly."
The best brigade came
down the hill to the right on the run, went through the timber in
front through a storm of shot and bursting shell and crashing limbs,
over the open field beyond, and straight into the cornfield, passing
as they went the fragments of three brigades shattered by the Rebel
fire, and streaming to the rear. They passed by Hooker, whose eyes
lighted as he saw these veteran troops led by a soldier whom he knew
he could trust. "I think they will hold it," he said.
General Hartstuff took
his troops very steadily, but now that they were under fire, not hurriedly,
up the hill from which
the cornfield begins to descend, and formed them on the crest. Not
a man who was not in full view - not one who bent
before the storm. Firing at first in volleys, they fired them at will
with wonderful rapidity and effect. The whole line crowned
the hill and stood out darkly against the sky, but lighted and shrouded
ever in flame and smoke. There were 12th and 13th Massachusetts and
another regiment which I cannot remember - old troops all of them.
(3)
General
Oliver
Howard
fought at Antietam in September, 1862. In his autobiography published
in 1907, he compared the military achievements of the two opposing
commanding officers, George
McClellan
and Robert E. Lee,
Lee's generalship at Antietam could not
be surpassed; but while McClellan's plans were excellent, the tactical
execution was bad. Had all of the right column been on the spot where
the work was to begin, Sumner, seizing Stuart's heights by the Potomac,
could have accomplished the purpose of his heart - to drive everything
before him through the village of Sharpsburg and on to Burnside's
front. Of course, Burnside's move should have been vigorous and simultaneous
with attacks on the right. McClellan so intended. we had, however,
a technical victory, for Lee withdrew after one day's delay and recrossed
the Potomac.
(4)
After seeing the photographs taken by Alexander
Gardner
at of the battle at Antietam, the writer, Oliver
Wendell Holmes recorded his views on the nature of war.
Let him who wishes to know what war
is look at this series of illustrations. It is so nearly like visiting
the battlefield to look over these views that all the emotions excited
by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, stewed with rags
and wrecks, come back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of
our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead
they too vividly represented. The sight of these pictures is a commentary
on civilization such as the savage might well triumph to show its
missionaries.
(5)
Sarah
E. Edmonds
was present at Antietam and later wrote about it in her book,
Nurse and Spy in the Union Army (1865).
How shall I describe the sights which
I saw and the impressions which I had as I rode over those fields!
There were men and horses thrown together in heaps above ground; others
lay where they had fallen, their limbs bleaching in the sun without
the appearance of burial. There was one in particular - a cavalryman;
he and his horse both lay together, nothing but the bones and clothing
remained; but one of his arms stood straight up, or rather the bones
and the coatsleeve, his hand had dropped off at the wrist and lay
on the ground; not a finger or joint was separated but the hand was
perfect.
(6)
Abraham Lincoln, in discussion with journalists
about General George
McClellan
(March, 1863)
I do not, as some do, regard McClellan
either as a traitor or an officer without capacity. He sometimes has
bad counselors, but he is loyal, and he has some fine military qualities.
I adhered to him after nearly all my constitutional advisers lost
faith in him. But do you want to know when I gave him up? It was after
the battle of Antietam. The Blue Ridge was then between our army and
Lee's. I directed McClellan peremptorily to move on Richmond. It was
eleven days before he crossed his first man over the Potomac; it was
eleven days after that before he crossed the last man. Thus he was
twenty-two days in passing the river at a much easier and more practicable
ford than that where Lee crossed his entire army between dark one
night and daylight the next morning. That was the last grain of sand
which broke the camel's back. I relieved McClellan at once.
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
