Hearts Touched by Fire

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Hearts Touched by Fire Page 62

by Harold Holzer


  The conduct of the battle on the left has given rise to several criticisms, among which the most prominent has been that Porter’s corps, which lay in reserve, was not put in at the same time with the Ninth Corps. McClellan answered this by saying that he did not think it prudent to divest the center of all reserve troops.13 No doubt a single strong division marching beyond the left flank of the Ninth Corps would have so occupied A. P. Hill’s division that our movement into Sharpsburg could not have been checked, and, assisted by the advance of Sumner and Franklin on the right, apparently would have made certain the complete rout of Lee. As troops are put in reserve, not to diminish the army, but to be used in a pinch, I am deeply convinced that McClellan’s refusal to use them on the left was the result of his continued conviction through all the day after Sedgwick’s defeat, that Lee was overwhelmingly superior in force, and was preparing to return a crushing blow upon our right flank. He was keeping something in hand to cover a retreat, if that wing should be driven back. Except in this way, also, I am at a loss to account for the inaction of our right during the whole of our engagement on the left. Looking at our part of the battle as only a strong diversion to prevent or delay Lee’s following up his success against Hooker and the rest, it is intelligible. I certainly so understood it at the time, as my report witnesses, and McClellan’s preliminary report supports this view. If he had been impatient to have our attack delivered earlier, he had reason for double impatience that Franklin’s fresh troops should assail Lee’s left simultaneously with ours, unless he regarded action there as hopeless, and looked upon our movement as a sort of forlorn-hope to keep Lee from following up his advantages.

  PRESIDENT LINCOLN IN GENERAL MCCLELLAN’S TENT AT ANTIETAM AFTER THE BATTLE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

  But even these are not all the troublesome questions requiring an answer. Couch’s division had been left north-east of Maryland Heights to observe Jackson’s command, supposed still to be in Harper’s Ferry. Why could it not have come up on our left as well as A. P. Hill’s division, which was the last of the Confederate troops to leave the Ferry, there being nothing to observe after it was gone? Couch’s division, coming with equal pace with Hill’s on the other side of the river, would have answered our needs as well as one from Porter’s corps. Hill came, but Couch did not. Yet even then, a regiment of horse watching that flank and scouring the country as we swung it forward would have developed Hill’s presence and enabled the commanding general either to stop our movement or to take the available means to support it; but the cavalry was put to no such use; it occupied the center of the whole line, only its artillery being engaged during the day. It would have been invaluable to Hooker in the morning as it would have been to us in the afternoon. McClellan had marched from Frederick City with the information that Lee’s army was divided, Jackson being detached with a large force to take Harper’s Ferry. He had put Lee’s strength at 120,000 men. Assuming that there was still danger that Jackson might come upon our left with a large force, and that Lee had proven strong enough without Jackson to repulse three corps on our right and right center, McClellan might have regarded his own army as divided also for the purpose of meeting both opponents, and his cavalry would have been upon the flank of the part with which he was attacking Lee; Porter would have been in position to help either part in an extremity, or to cover a retreat, and Burnside would have been the only subordinate available to check Lee’s apparent success. Will any other hypothesis intelligibly account for McClellan’s dispositions and orders? The error in the above assumption would be that McClellan estimated Lee’s troops at nearly double their actual numbers, and that what was taken for proof of Lee’s superiority in force on the field was a series of partial reverses which resulted directly from the piecemeal and disjointed way in which McClellan’s morning attacks had been made.

  The same explanation is the most satisfactory one that I can give for the inaction of Thursday, the 18th of September. Could McClellan have known the desperate condition of most of Lee’s brigades he would have known that his own were in much better case, badly as they had suffered. I do not doubt that most of his subordinates discouraged the resumption of the attack, for the rooted belief in Lee’s preponderance of numbers had been chronic in the army during the whole year. That belief was based upon the inconceivably mistaken reports of the secret service organization, accepted at headquarters, given to the War Department at Washington as a reason for incessant demands of reënforcements, and permeating downward through the whole organization till the error was accepted as truth by officers and men, and became a factor in their morale which can hardly be over-estimated. The result was that Lee retreated unmolested on the night of the 18th, and that what might have been a real and decisive success was a drawn battle in which our chief claim to victory was the possession of the field.

  The Ninth Corps occupied its position on the heights west of the Antietam without further molestation, except an irritating picket firing, till the Confederate army retreated. But the position was one in which no shelter from the weather could be had; nor could any cooking be done; and the troops were short of rations. Late in the afternoon of Thursday, Morell’s division of Porter’s corps was ordered to report to Burnside to relieve the picket line and some of the regiments in the most exposed position. One brigade was sent over the Antietam for this purpose,14 and a few of the Ninth Corps regiments were enabled to withdraw far enough to cook some rations of which they had been in need for twenty-four hours. Harland’s brigade of Rodman’s division had been taken to the east side of the stream on the evening of the 17th to be reorganized.

  GENERAL MCCLELLAN AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT ANTIETAM. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

  The Proclamation of Emancipation was published September 22d, three days after the withdrawal of Lee to Virginia, and was communicated to the army officially on September 24th.

  On October 1st President Lincoln visited the army to see for himself if it was in no condition to pursue Lee into Virginia. General McClellan says in his general report: “His Excellency the President honored the Army of the Potomac with a visit, and remained several days, during which he went through the different encampments, reviewed the troops, and went over the battle-fields of South Mountain and Antietam. I had the opportunity during this visit to describe to him the operations of the army since the time it left Washington, and gave him my reasons for not following the enemy after he crossed the Potomac.” In “McClellan’s Own Story” he says that the President “more than once assured me that he was fully satisfied with my whole course from the beginning: that the only fault he could possibly find was, that I was too prone to be sure that everything was ready before acting, but that my actions were all right when I started. I said to him that I thought a few experiments with those who acted before they were ready would probably convince him that in the end I consumed less time than they did.”

  After the President’s return to Washington, October 5th, Halleck telegraphed to McClellan under date of October 6th: “The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south,” etc.

  On October 7th McClellan, in “General Orders No. 163,” referred to the Proclamation of Emancipation. He warned the army of the danger to military discipline of heated political discussions, and reminded them that the “remedy for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls.” On October 5th General McClellan had said, in a letter to his wife, “Mr. Aspinwall [W. H., of New York] is decidedly of the opinion that it is my duty to submit to the President’s proclamation and quietly continue doing my duty as a soldier. I presume he is right, and am at least sure that he is honest in his opinion. I shall surely give his views full consideration.” —EDITORS.

  * * *

  1 The information obtained from the neighborhood was that no fords of the Antietam were passable at that time, except one about half-way between the two upper bridges and another less than half a mile below Burnside’s Bridg
e. We, however, found during the engagement another ford a short distance above Burnside’s Bridge. The inquiry and reconnoissance for the fords was made by engineer officers of the general staff, and our orders were based on their reports.—J.D.C.

  2 Hooker’s unfinished report says he slept in the barn of D. R. Miller, but he places it on the east of the road, and the spot is fully identified as Poffenberger’s by General Gibbon, who commanded the right brigade, and by Major Rufus R. Dawes (afterward Brevet Brigadier-General), both of whom subsequently visited the field and determined the positions.—J.D.C.

  3 Of the early morning fight in the corn-field, General Hooker says in his report:

  “We had not proceeded far before I discovered that a heavy force of the enemy had taken possession of a corn-field (I have since learned about a thirty-acre field), in my immediate front, and from the sun’s rays falling on their bayonets projecting above the corn could see that the field was filled with the enemy, with arms in their hands, standing apparently at ‘support arms.’ Instructions were immediately given for the assemblage of all of my spare batteries near at hand, of which I think there were five or six, to spring into battery on the right of this field, and to open with canister at once. In the time I am writing every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before.

  “It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield. Those that escaped fled in the opposite direction from our advance, and sought refuge behind the trees, fences, and stone ledges nearly on a line with the Dunker Church, etc., as there was no resisting this torrent of death-dealing missives.… The whole morning had been one of unusual animation to me and fraught with the grandest events. The conduct of my troops was sublime, and the occasion almost lifted me to the skies, and its memories will ever remain near me. My command followed the fugitives closely until we had passed the corn-field a quarter of a mile or more, when I was removed from my saddle in the act of falling out of it from loss of blood, having previously been struck without my knowledge.”

  —EDITORS.

  4 Both in the West and East Wood and on the ground south of the East Wood the Confederates were protected by outcroppings of rocks, which served as natural breastworks.—EDITORS.

  5 Stuart says he had batteries from all parts of Jackson’s command, and mentions Poague’s, Pegram’s, and Carrington’s, besides Pelham’s which was attached to the cavalry. He also says he was supported part of the time by Early’s brigade; afterward by one regiment of it, the 13th Virginia.—EDITORS.

  6 The order assigning Meade to command is dated 1:25 P.M.—EDITORS.

  7 Until he was driven out, about 1:30, according to Generals Williams and Greene.—EDITORS.

  8 Sumner says Richardson came about an hour later. Howard, who succeeded Sedgwick, says his division moved “about 7.” French says he followed “about 7:30.” Hancock, who succeeded Richardson, says that officer received his orders “about 9:30.”—EDITORS.

  9 Sumner’s principal attack was made, as I have already indicated, at right angles to that of Hooker. He had thus crossed the line of Hooker’s movement both in the latter’s advance and retreat. Greene’s division was the only part of the Twelfth Corps troops he saw, and he led Sedgwick’s men to the right of these. Ignorant, as he necessarily was, of what had occurred before, he assumed that he formed on the extreme right of the Twelfth Corps, and that he fronted in the same direction as Hooker had done. This misconception of the situation led him into another error. He had seen only a few stragglers and wounded men of Hooker’s corps on the line of his own advance, and hence concluded that the First Corps was completely dispersed and its division and brigade organizations broken up. He not only gave this report to McClellan at the time, but reiterated it later in his statement before the Committee on the Conduct of the War. The truth was that he had marched westward more than half a mile south of the Poffenberger hill, where Meade was with the sadly diminished but still organized First Corps, and half that distance south of the Miller farm buildings, near which Williams’s division of the Twelfth Corps held the ground along the turnpike till they were carried away in the disordered retreat of Sedgwick’s men toward the right. Sedgwick had gone in, therefore, between Greene and Williams, of the Twelfth Corps, and the four divisions of the two corps alternated in their order from left to right, thus: French, Greene, Sedgwick, Williams.—J.D.C.

  10 Here, in regard to the time at which Sumner was ordered to march to Hooker’s support, is a disputed question of fact. In his official report, McClellan says he ordered Burnside to make this attack at 8 o’clock, and from the day that the latter relieved McClellan in command of the army, and especially after the battle of Fredericksburg, a hot partisan effort was made to hold Burnside responsible for the lack of complete success at Antietam as well as for the repulse upon the Rappahannock. I think I understand the limitations of Burnside’s abilities as a general, but I have had, ever since the battle itself, a profound conviction that the current criticisms upon him in relation to the battle of Antietam were unjust. Burnside’s official report declares that he received the order to advance at 10 o’clock. This 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 9 o’clock as my remembrance of the time. 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 believed he knew the time at which the order 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 quite lately that I saw a copy of his report or learned its contents, although I enjoyed his personal friendship down to the time of his death. He was content to have stated the fact as he knew it, and did not feel the need of debating it. Several circumstances have satisfied me that his accuracy in giving the hour was greater than my own. McClellan’s preliminary report (dated October 16th, 1862) explicitly states that the order to Burnside to attack was “communicated to him at 10 o’clock A.M.” This exact agreement with General Burnside would ordinarily be conclusive in itself.—J.D.C.

  11 Colonel D. B. Sackett, who says he got the order from McClellan about 9 o’clock.—EDITORS.

  12 It will not be wondered at, therefore, if to my mind the story of the 8 o’clock order is an instance of the way in which an erroneous memory is based upon the desire to make the facts accord with a theory. The actual time must have been as much later than 9 o’clock as the period during which, with absorbed attention, we had been watching the battle on the right,—a period, it is safe to say, much longer than it seemed to us. The judgment of the hour, 9 o’clock, which I gave in my report, was merely my impression from passing events, for I hastened at once to my own duties without thinking to look at my watch, while the cumulative evidence seems to prove conclusively that the time stated by Burnside, and by McClellan himself in his original report, is correct.—J.D.C.

  13 General Thomas M. Anderson, in 1886 Lieutenant-Colonel of the 9th Infantry, U.S.A., wrote to the editors in that year:

  “At the battle of Antietam I commanded one of the battalions of Sykes’s division of regulars, held in reserve on the north of Antietam creek near the stone bridge. Three of our battalions were on the south side of the creek, deployed as skirmishers in front of Sharpsburg. At the time A. P. Hill began to force Burnside back upon the left, I was talking with Colonel Buchanan, our brigade commander, when an orderly brought him a note from Captain (now Colonel) Blunt, who was the senior officer with the battalions of our brigade beyond the creek. The note, as
I remember, stated in effect that Captain Dryer, commanding the 4th Infantry, had ridden into the enemy’s lines, and upon returning had reported that there were but one Confederate battery and two regiments in front of Sharpsburg, connecting the wings of Lee’s army.* Dryer was one of the coolest and bravest officers in our service, and on his report Blunt asked instructions. We learned afterward that Dryer proposed that he, Blunt, and Brown, commanding the 4th, 12th, and 14th Infantries, should charge the enemy in Sharpsburg instanter. But Blunt preferred asking for orders. Colonel Buchanan sent the note to Sykes, who was at the time talking with General McClellan and Fitz-John Porter, about a hundred and fifty yards from us. They were sitting on their horses between Taft’s and Weed’s batteries a little to our left. I saw the note passed from one to the other in the group, but could not, of course, hear what was said.

 

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