Battle of Antietam

“ What a pity it truly is that the tonic air of battlefields—the air that Philip breathed that night before Antietam—cannot be gathered up and preserved as a precious elixir to reinvigorate the atmosphere in times of peace, when men grow faint of heart and cowardly, and quake at thought of death.
The soldiers huddled in their blankets on the ground slept far more soundly that night before the battle than their men-folk and women-folk in their warm beds at home. For them it was a night of watching, a vigil of prayers and tears. ”

“ The regiment in its swift advance now came nearer to the Antietam, the narrow but deep creek between its high banks. One or two shots from the far side warned them to come more slowly, and Colonel Winchester drew his men up on a knoll, waiting for the rest of the army to advance.
Dick put his glasses to his eyes, and slowly swept a wide curve on the peninsula of Antietam. Great armies drawn up for battle were a spectacle that no boy could ever view calmly, and his heart beat so hard that it caused him actual physical pain. ”

“ The only victory won was that at Antietam in Maryland. They had been beaten at the two battles of Bull Run, the seven days' fight at Richmond, and the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, while the battle of Antietam had been won with great loss of life.
But there was soon to be a victory that would make up for more than one defeat. Shortly after the fight at Chancellorsville General Lee broke camp and marched north with the greatest speed. The Union army followed as fast as they could march, for there was danger of Baltimore or even Philadelphia being taken. ”

“ Battle of Antietam.
After the retreat of Lee, I rode over the ground occupied by the Rebels, and surveyed the field from every point. The dead were thickly strewn. A Rebel battery had occupied the ground around the Dunker church, a small brick building on the turnpike, a mile south of Poffenberg's. At its door-step lay a major, a captain, and eleven men, all dead. A wounded horse, unable to lie down, was standing near a dismantled caisson. Almost human was the beseeching look of the dumb (p. 121) beast! ”

“ It is remarkable what a change takes place in a year or two in the appearance of the ground on which a battle has been fought. Thirty months had now elapsed since the battle of Antietam, and a casual observer would not have noticed any trace of the conflict.
I saw a Mr. Miller plowing in a field opposite the little Tunker Church by the pike—a building that had been nearly knocked to pieces in the fight, but had since been repaired—and he showed me a full set of “bones” lying in a fence-corner, which he had just “plowed up.” He said they had been scarcely under the surface of the earth ”

“ COLONEL RICHARD A. OAKFORD
Killed at battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862
(see image enlarged)
Reaching the top of the knoll we were met by a terrific volley from the rebels in the sunken road down the other side, not more than one hundred yards away, and also from another rebel line in a corn-field just beyond. Some of our men were killed and wounded by this volley. We were ordered to lie down just under the top of the hill and crawl forward and fire over, each man crawling back, reloading his piece in this prone position and again crawling forward and firing. ”

“ Another shout arose, telling that Buell was coming, and, two hours after the combat had opened, he arrived with more troops. But night was now at hand, and the sun set over a draw like that at Antietam. Forty thousand men had fought a battle only about three hours long, and eight thousand of them lay dead or wounded upon the sanguinary field. One half the Union army never reached the field in time to fight.
As both sides drew off in the darkness, Dick shouted in triumph, thinking they had won a victory. A bullet fired by some retiring Southern skirmisher glanced along his head. ”

“ SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR CHAPTER I General Observations on Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville —Battles at Winchester under General Milroy—His Defeat and Retreat to Harper's Ferry—With Incidents The Confederate Army, under Lee, invaded Maryland in 1862, and after the drawn battle of Antietam, September 17th, it retired through the Shenandoah Valley and the mountain gaps behind the Rappahannock. ”

“ A few days after the battle of Antietam, the President was driving over the field in an ambulance, accompanied by Marshal Lamon, General McClellan and another officer. Heavy details of men were engaged in the task of burying the dead. ”

“ Powerful Federal artillery continued to thunder across the hills; heavy blue columns could still be seen in overmastering strength across Antietam Creek and far to the north. But the Federal commander had called a halt.
An hour and a half after the timely arrival of A. P. Hill’s division from Harpers Ferry, the battle ended. With sunset, the firing died away. That night, the tired men lay on their arms in line of battle. Neither side would admit defeat; neither could claim the victory.
Retreat from Sharpsburg
Seldom had Lee’s army fought a battle so strenuous and so long. ”

“ While the battle of Antietam was being so hotly fought in nearby Maryland, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, advancing from Washington with ten companies of Federal cavalry, reached Leesburg where there still remained a small Confederate force made up of Company A of the 6th Virginia Cavalry and about forty Mississippi infantrymen under Captain Gibson, then acting as Provost Marshal of the town. Being largely outnumbered, the Confederates were about to retire when they were joined by Captain E. V. White and thirty of his men. ”

“ You can have too many battles in one year. I didn't get rest enough after my wound at the Second Manassas before I had to go in and save our army at Antietam, and then it was but a little time before we fought at Perryville. That wasn't as big a battle as some of the others, but Dick, for those mad three hours it seemed that all the demons of death were turned loose. ”

“ The sun was already hidden by the lofty slopes of the western mountains, and there would be no battle that day. In another half hour full darkness would be upon them.
But Dick felt that something had been achieved. A powerful Union force was now beyond the Antietam, with its feet rooted firmly in the soil of the peninsula. It looked directly south at the Confederate army and there was no barrier between. Lee would have to face at once, Hooker on the north and McClellan on the east across the Antietam. The Union army had been numerous enough to outflank him. ”

“ I have just read your despatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything? ”

“ The woes of bereavement were not wide-spread; the killed at Manassas were hardly more than we read of now in a disaster at sea or a catastrophe in the mines. The whole army engaged hardly outnumbered the slaughtered at Antietam, Gettysburg, or Burnside's butchery at St. Mary's Hill.
Hence the marvel of the instant fusion, the swift resolve of the Northern mind. The battle was the sudden grapple of aggressive weakness—catching the half-contemptuous strong man unaware and rolling him in the dust. ”

“ The Fifty-ninth went into the battle of the Antietam with 321 men, fought around the Dunker Church, and lost 224, killed or wounded, including nine officers killed. The Sixty-first lost 110 killed or wounded at Fair Oaks, out of 432; 106 in the siege of Petersburg, and 79 at Glendale. Francis C. Barlow and Nelson A. Miles were two of its four successive colonels. ”

“ Our own forces did not exceed eighty-five thousand men, and it is but correct to say that not seventy thousand were actually engaged on the day of the great battle. My own judgment is, that at no time during the fight was the Confederate army ever confronted by a force outnumbering their own.
Confederate writers have sought to make it appear that Lee, at Antietam, fought and practically defeated a force in excess of his own in the ratio of three to one. ”

“ Let x equal the whole distance from the gap to the Antietam, which is eight miles, let y equal the distance which we have come which is three miles, then x minus y equals the distance left, which is five miles. Wonderful! wonderful! You'll soon have a great head on you, Frank.”
“If some rebel cannoneer doesn't shoot it off in the coming battle. By George, we're driving their skirmishers before us! They don't seem to make any stand at all!”
The vanguard certainly met with no very formidable resistance as it advanced over the rolling country. ”

“ In the evening General Lee, learning that large bodies of fresh troops were reaching McClellan, determined to recross the Potomac. As soon as night came, the troops began to move towards the ford at Shepherdstown. “For hours,” says Dr. Dabney, “Jackson was seen seated upon his horse, motionless as a statue, watching the passage until the last man and the last carriage had touched the Southern shore.” The battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam (An tē′tam) , as it is sometimes called, was a drawn battle—neither side was victorious, each losing in killed and wounded about twelve thousand men. ”

“ When the Civil War came, in her seventieth year, she had "an intense desire to live to see the conclusion of the struggle," but could not conjecture "how peace and good neighborhood are ever to follow from this bitter hate." "It is delightful to see the gallantry of some of our men, who are repeating the heroic deeds that seemed fast receding to fabulous times." Some of these young heroes were very near to her. Maj. William Dwight Sedgwick, who fell on the bloody field of Antietam was her nephew, Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at the battle of Spottsylvania, was her cousin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But let us be thankful for what we did achieve: never should the nation forget how a retreating, discouraged, defeated, demoralized, and even mutinous army, that had suffered terribly in killed and wounded, and lost prisoners and large numbers of cannon and material, was again reformed, and marched triumphantly against a victorious foe; achieved on Sunday the brilliant victory of South Mountain, and on Wednesday fought the bloody fight of Antietam. ”

“ Like a furnace of fire blazed the midsummer sun, When to saddle we leaped at the order, Spurred on by the boom of the deep-throated gun That told of the foe on our border. A mist in our rear lay Antietam’s dark plain, And thoughts of its carnage came o’er us; But smiling beyond surged the fields of ripe grain, And we swore none should reap it before us.
That night, with the ensign who rode by my side, On the camp’s dreary edge I stood picket, Our ears intent lest every wind-rustle hide A foe’s stealthy tread in the thicket ”

“ Harry knew, too, the temper and resolution of the North, the slow, cold wrath that could not be checked by one defeat or half a dozen. Antietam, as he saw it, had merely been a temporary check to the Confederate arms, where the forces of Lee and Jackson had fought off at least double their number. The Northern men could not yet boast of a single clean-cut victory in the battles of the east, but they were coming on again as stern and resolute as ever. Defeat seemed to serve only as an incentive to them. ”

“ Hill rode up to Lee’s headquarters at the Oak Grove, then quickly to D. R. Jones, whose exhausted troops formed the last defense 45 line in front of Sharpsburg. Hill’s five brigades now rushed toward the Federal flank. Confusion gripped Burnside’s men as this unexpected onslaught plowed into their lines. Men broke and started to run. In moments the tide had turned. The Federal lines, sagging from the overwhelming charge of the Southerners, and with gaping holes cut by artillery, fell back across the hills to the sheltering banks of Antietam Creek. ”

“ The retreat to the Antietam, although effectively screened by Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade of cavalry, was not effected in the best of order. Many of the regiments had been broken by the hard fighting on the mountain; men had become lost in the forest, or had sought safety to the rear; and the number of stragglers was very large. It was not, then, with its usual confidence that the army moved into position on the ridge above the Antietam Creek. General Longstreet, indeed, was of opinion that the army should have recrossed the Potomac at once. ”

“ The Antietam National Battlefield was established August 30, 1890, to commemorate the significant events of September 17, 1862, and to preserve the important features of the battlefield. Administered by the War Department until 1933, the site was transferred that year to the U.S. Department of the Interior to be administered by the National Park Service. ”

“ He was engaged in twenty-four pitched battles, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Five Forks, and was six times wounded, thrice severely. ”

“ T. J. Fales, and some others also brought supplies to the field, and ministered to the wounded, while the shot and shell were crashing around them, and Antietam had its representatives of the fair sex, angels of mercy, but for whose tender and judicious ministrations, hundreds and perhaps thousands would not have seen another morning's light. In the race for Richmond which followed, Miss Barton's train was hospital and diet kitchen to the Ninth Corps, and much of the time for the other Corps also. At Fredericksburg, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. ”