Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  The center now was wrecked. East of the Hagerstown road, for hundreds of yards, no organization of even a thousand men confronted the advancing Federals. “Lee’s army,” said Porter Alexander, “was ruined and the end of the Confederacy was in sight.” One more heavy thrust by McClellan would divide beyond possible reunion the two wings of the Confederate army and would bring the Federals to the rear of both fragments.17

  If Harvey Hill realized that the rout and ruin of the Army of Northern Virginia might come then and there, on his front, he did not exhibit new anxiety. Neither did Old Pete. Fuming in the carpet slipper his injured heel compelled him to wear, Longstreet rode or hobbled in search of men and guns to mend the gap in the line. In a cornfield Hill found Boyce’s South Carolina battery, which in a few minutes was sprinkling with canister the Union troops who now had crossed the sunken road. Longstreet rushed into action Miller’s battery of the Washington Artillery. Closely watching Federal gunners opened with a devastating blast. Miller’s men began to fall. Longstreet’s staff officers slipped off their mounts and took the stations of the stricken gunners. Old Pete himself held their horses and calmly assisted in correcting the range.18

  At this instant, when oncoming disaster and improvised defense were balanced, Miller, Boyce, and the scattered remains of D. H. Hill’s command found on their left unbending support—the 27th North Carolina and 3rd Arkansas of Walker’s division. Now that the Federals had swept back the troops on either flank, these two regiments held an advanced position. They were under Colonel John R. Cooke of the 27th, whose gallantry was matched by that of Captain John W. Reedy commanding the 3rd Arkansas. From these well-handled regiments poured a volume of fire which the Federals might have credited to a strong and confident brigade. Cooke’s bold fire and that of the two batteries began to tell. On Hill’s center and right the blue line stopped, wavered, and slowly slipped back.

  Hill sensed opportunity. A single fresh regiment, he thought, “could drive the whole of them in our front across the Antietam.” He did not have a regiment—not one, fresh or blown—but would not the still unwounded soldiers attack? He would lead them. Soon he had some 200 in an uneven line. Hill seized a rifle, shouted a command, and started forward. It was fine but it was fruitless. So small a force could not get far in the face of the fire the Unionists poured into it. Hill reluctantly had to recall his volunteers.19

  Then Cooke, unmindful of the odds, ordered his two regiments forward. On the Carolinians’ front the most conspicuous figure was the color bearer, William H. Campbell. In the storm of bullets, waving the regiment’s red flag, he pushed ahead of the line. Cooke had to call out to him to slacken the pace. “Colonel,” protested Campbell, “I can’t let that Arkansas fellow get ahead of me!” The two regiments, disdaining security for their flanks, pushed wildly on till they found the enemy in ranks behind a fence in a cornfield. With a cold prudence that matched his hot valor, Cooke decided not to assault. His position was too advanced, his numbers too few, his ammunition too low. He ordered a withdrawal. Both regiments were thinned and exhausted before they reached the position from which they had launched their attack, but they still were undaunted. “Tell General Longstreet to send me some ammunition,” he said. “I have not a cartridge in my command, but will hold my position at the point of the bayonet.” He would stay there, he swore, “if we must all go to hell together!”20

  As much to the amazement as to the relief of the Confederate leaders, about 2:00 P.M. the attack on the center came to an end. It was learned subsequently that Franklin’s VI Corps had arrived on the field, but that McClellan decided against employing the fresh troops. “The repulse of this, the only remaining corps available for attack,” the commanding general explained, “would peril the safety of the whole army.”21

  The battle was not over; it had undergone another shift. Other actors held the stage. At 7 o’clock that morning the scene of supreme danger had been on the Confederate left, where Jackson’s line had been broken. Noon had brought the crisis of Rodes’s withdrawal from the center. Now the Confederate right was being threatened with ruin.

  At dawn that wing of the army had been numerically weak; hourly it had become weaker. Walker had been hurried to the left. Only the troops of D. R. Jones remained—six small brigades, whose “aggregate present” was 2,460 men. From this force Tige Anderson’s five Georgia regiments had been sent to help Jackson. Until A. P. Hill arrived from Harper’s Ferry—if he could hope to complete his march that day—Jones could call up two regiments only. Jones, in a word, with about 2,000 infantry, had to defend more than a mile of front.22

  This risky thinning of the right had been ordered in sound knowledge and shrewd appraisal of the terrain. The position assigned David Jones was, for the most part, on heights overlooking Antietam Creek. Artillery was posted where it could cover the infantry. A narrow bridge, which after that day was styled Burnside’s, crossed the creek at the foot of the heights midway Jones’s position and was so tempting an avenue of advance that the enemy was almost certain to attempt to force it. But the road leading to the bridge ran parallel to the creek for a quarter of a mile. A few hundred men on the heights to the west could make that stretch of road a slaughter pen.

  Command of the small force defending the crossing of Antietam Creek was in the hands of Robert Toombs, who had been restored to duty on the field of Manassas. Toombs had written his wife of his desire to distinguish himself in some great battle. “The day after such an event, I will retire if I live through it.”23 His opportunity had come. The stage was his. If Toombs the politician was to prove himself the successful soldier, the hour was striking.

  During the morning the Federals threatened to plunge over the bridge and overwhelm the two regiments Colonel Henry L. Benning had stationed where he could command both the crossing and the approaches to it. Each time the Federals advanced, they were repulsed bloodily. By noon signs had multiplied that a major attack was coming. How could these forces be resisted? The two Georgia regiments defending the stream-side opposite the bridge had almost exhausted their ammunition. David Jones designated a new position, high on the hillside, where Toombs’s brigade could be positioned. Benning—“Old Rock” to his men—was redeploying his men when, about 1 o’clock, from across Antietam Creek, there came a sudden stir. Swiftly and in heavy mass, two Federal regiments dashed for the bridge. Before the Confederate artillery could be trained on them, they were over!

  West of the stream, in a moment, the Stars and Stripes were floating. Wild, hoarse cheers were raised. Jones’s infantry could do nothing but watch and steel their hearts for the coming charge. Moment by moment the Union force grew stronger, the threat to Toombs more desperate. Close to 3 o’clock, slowly and ponderously, the mighty line began to move up the hill.24

  The chief attack was to the left of Toombs and against those of Jones’s brigades on the crest directly east of Sharpsburg. Small as they were, they had good artillery, and for a time it was a stand-off fight. This was encouraging, for word had come that A. P. Hill’s Light Division was coming up. If the Union force could be held until Hill arrived, five veteran brigades could be thrown against the blue line creeping through the corn and across the open ground. Jones was diligent; Lee himself came to the Confederate right and brought to bear all the supporting artillery he could find.

  It was not enough. The Federals moved up with a strength not to be resisted by Confederates so few. Kemper’s brigade was driven back on the town.25 Drayton’s command was broken. Dick Garnett’s men, when they at length gave ground, went far around to the north side of the town. Jenkins’s brigade was in danger of being cut off and surrounded. By 4:00 P.M. the battle on the right was almost lost to the Confederates. The Federals had gained nearly all the high ground east and south of Sharpsburg. If they could push 1,200 yards farther westward, they would be across the line of retreat of the left wing of Lee’s army.

  Disaster should have been in the air, and with it the first signs of stampede. It was not so.
The thrilling news had spread that A. P. Hill was coming. For fate or fame, his was to be the last scene. On that furious march from Harper’s Ferry the impetuosity that had been Hill’s vice was now his spur. If regiments swooned by the road, to Sharpsburg he would go in time of reinforce Lee. Soldiers were to say he urged the laggard forward with the point of his sword. Every sound of fire was a summons. Speed the march, close up, close up! The life of the Confederacy might depend on the pace of that one division.26

  Hill rode ahead to meet Lee, who greeted him in relief: “General Hill, this is the last force we have. You must hold half in reserve, and send in the other half.” Where were his troops; how soon would they arrive? The answer well might have been proud: Batteries already were arriving; not far behind were the South Carolinians of Gregg. Although sixteen miles of weary road had worn them, Gregg’s men marched as became the vanguard of Gaines’ Mill. Closely following Gregg was Archer.27

  In brief conference Hill and David Jones agreed on dispositions for a joint attack on the exposed right of the Federals pressing into the very streets of Sharpsburg. “I immediately ordered a charge,” wrote Robert Toombs, “which, being brilliantly and energetically executed by my whole line, the enemy broke in confusion and fled.” That was as Toombs saw it in retrospect. In the red reality of the field, the repulse involved far moretroops than Toombs’s brigade and a part of Kemper’s. A. P. Hill threw Archer’s men forward in a direct charge. Gregg and Branch supported Archer and Toombs vigorously with a flank fire.28

  On that right flank, directing the fire at the head of his brigade, L. O’B. Branch fell. Maxcy Gregg was just wheeling his injured horse when a bullet crashed near his right hip and almost knocked him out of the saddle. His first concern was a soldierly transfer of the command. Then a stretcher bearer examining the injury cried, “General, you aren’t wounded, you are only bruised.” Up sprang Gregg and soon was directing his men from the back of a bony ambulance horse he stripped of its harness.29

  By that time, the Confederates were driving the whole left wing of the Federals downhill to the banks of the Antietam. Above the din of battle could be heard the fox-hunters’ call, the wild “rebel yell.” Red banners were following Stars and Stripes. Yard by yard the Union line, sagging and gaping but unbroken, fell back to the shelter of the low ridges near the creek. Slowly, after sunset, the fire died away. By nightfall the ghastly action ended. To the bark of the gun succeeded the wail of the wounded.

  Never had the Army of Northern Virginia fought a battle so doubtful, save at Malvern Hill. During twelve hours and more of conflict, Lee had thrown into action every organized infantry unit north of the Potomac. Within supporting distance south of the river was only Thomas’s brigade, guarding the guns and stores captured at Harper’s Ferry. Straggling had reduced to less than 40,000 the men who had withstood the shock of the furious assaults that rolled from left to right. Sharpsburg, indeed, was not one battle but three. Mercifully for the Confederates, the mismanagement of the battle by the Federals was such that after Jackson had been strained to the utmost and close to disaster, the Unionists left his troops panting and had attacked the division of D. H. Hill and the reinforcements sent him. For an hour or two Hill had been in danger of being overwhelmed. When it seemed that one more thrust inevitably would drive him in rout to the Potomac, the enemy had desisted. Then the thin Confederate right had been assailed.

  Outside Dick Anderson’s command, which had not been brought fully into the battle after the fall of its commander, every division had suffered cruelly. Retreat seemed as logical as, after so gallant a fight, it would be honorable; but Lee would not have it so. He held his ground all the next day, while his adversary hesitated, and not until the evening of the eighteenth did he begin a withdrawal to Virginia through Boteler’s Ford near Shepherdstown. The price of the expedition had been 13,900 casualties or more. Of these, about 10,300 represented Sharpsburg. Federal losses were 27,767, of which Harper’s Ferry accounted for 45 per cent. Twice as many men the Federals had lost as had the Confederates, but one for two was more than the South could afford to pay.

  3

  PENDLETON FAILS TO COUNT HIS MEN

  Like many another tragedy, that of Sharpsburg did not end at its high moment. It was prolonged to an anticlimax in which the embarrassed central figure was the Reverend William Nelson Pendleton, brigadier general and chief of artillery, Army of Northern Virginia. On September 19 came what Pendleton termed “my great responsibility.” Under orders from Lee to post guns to dispute the crossing of the Potomac at Boteler’s Ford, he found positions for thirty-three and held eleven others out of range but within call. Scarcely had this been done than the Federals appeared on the opposite side of the river. Long-range rifles soon opened on Pendleton’s batteries. While an indifferent duel went on, Lee moved southward to get the men out of range. Pendleton’s orders were to hold the crossing all day and through the night unless pressure became too great. In that event, he was to evacuate his position after nightfall and follow the track of the army.

  The minister-artillerist never before had commanded infantry, of which he had two battle-thinned brigades. He instructed the inexperienced colonels commanding them in their duties in the face of a long-range artillery exchange, but neglected to inquire as to how many men they had in their ranks before the forces were sent off to their various postings. Federal fire from the opposite shore quickened late in the afternoon. Sharpshooters seemed to be practicing at the expense of the Confederates. Soon the colonels of the infantry at the ford sent in their complaint. Pressure was getting too heavy, they said, to be resisted at that point by the 300 men at their command.30

  Three hundred men? No more than that? The news that he had not more than 300 riflemen opposite the ford must have made the gray parson look grayer still. With the equivalent of a good-sized battalion he had to protect forty-four guns, thirty-three of which were where withdrawal might be difficult! It was, said Pendleton, a “critical and anxious hour” until dusk would come. The batteries began to slip off in the shadows. Suddenly infantry were hurrying past him to the rear. In answer to his inquiry they said they were sharpshooters from the ford. Their thin line had given way; the Federals had reached the south side of the river!

  He sent staff officers to hurry to the rear the last batteries and the headquarters equipment. “Intending first,” he explained to his wife, “to save all I could, and, secondly, not to expose myself needlessly to capture, I passed … toward the road which some of the artillery had, I knew, already taken.” Turning out of the column in the darkness to search out support, he saw no more of his guns and did not know what befell them. At last, past midnight, the alarmed Pendleton stumbled into the bivouac where Lee and his staff were sleeping. Arousing Lee, he recounted his afternoon’s experience, and announced that the enemy had captured all the reserve artillery. “All?” exclaimed Lee. “Yes, General, I fear all.”

  A staff officer present observed that Lee “exhibited no temper, made no reproach that I could hear, either then, or even afterwards…” With Jackson it was different. Pendleton’s report brought from Stonewall more show of anxiety and perhaps of disgust than he exhibited on any other occasion during the war. “He took the matter in his own hands,” wrote Kyd Douglas. By 6:30 the next morning, September 20, Jackson had ordered A. P. Hill to return to the Potomac and drive the enemy back across it. Early was to move in support.31

  The movement was rapid, the action swift and decisive. Pender and Archer, cooperating perfectly, drove the Federal party into the river and shot scores who were splashing vainly toward the northern shore. “This severe work having been accomplished,” wrote the relieved Pendleton, “I found that but four of our pieces had been lost.” It seemed that Major William Nelson of his staff had stayed on the previous night and labored diligently until he had nearly all the guns withdrawn safely. Nelson, in the estimation of the army, had saved the reserve artillery.32

  The Boteler’s Ford affair provoked artillery lieute
nant Ham Chamber-layne to say hard things of General Pendleton, but he concluded in somewhat milder vein: “… Pendleton is Lee’s weakness. He is like the elephant, we have him & we don’t know what on earth to do with him, and it costs a devil of a sight to feed him.”

  In the end, Lee’s report of the Maryland expedition dismissed Pendleton’s part in the affair with two cold sentences: “General Pendleton was left to guard the ford with the reserve artillery and about 600 infantry. That night the enemy crossed the river above General Pendleton’s position, and his infantry support giving way, four of his guns were taken.” That was all, although it seemed to satisfy Pendleton. Rarely, after that day in September 1862, did he command any infantry. Had he done so, it is safe to say that he would, at the least, have counted them.33

  CHAPTER 18

  Rebuilding an Army

  1

  LONGSTREET AND JACKSON STEP UP

  Driving the Federals into the Potomac at Shepherdstown greatly relieved the feeling of the army, which refused to admit that it had been worsted in Maryland. The Southern press was like-minded. The Richmond Enquirer assured readers that if there had been a withdrawal, it was to cope with a flanking operation against Harper’s Ferry. Sharpsburg, said that authoritative journal, had witnessed “one of the most complete victories that has yet immortalized the Confederate arms.”This optimistic language did not stifle rumors. In Charleston, Rhett’s Mercury gloomily remarked that the recrossing of the Potomac to Shepherdstown was a “movement which, to the unmilitary eye, with no more subtle guide than the map, would certainly resemble a retreat.”