by John Waugh
As his soldiers marched they could hear the thunder of battle ahead—a discordant, distant rumbling, growing ever louder, drawing them on. Many of Hill’s ragged soldiers were respectably attired now, for the first time in months, wearing pieces of blue Union uniforms seized in the captured stores at Harpers Ferry.
The pace was killing and the sun and the dust and the heat were merciless. Men were dropping out all along the line of march, spent and exhausted. But still the column moved on. The ten-minute rest stops every hour that Jackson demanded were ignored. To hell with Jackson. He was already in Sharpsburg and the roar of the guns was insistent and demanding. Hill ranged up and down the column, a long-bearded demon in his red battle shirt shorn of all insignia of rank—cursing, prodding, exhorting, sometimes with the point or the flat of his saber. Lee needed this division in Sharpsburg and, by God, Hill was going to get it there.1
The husband that Dolly Hill loved—and the lover who had once won the heart of Nelly Marcy—was gentle, genial, approachable, affectionate, and witty. But this Confederate major general in the red hunting shirt driving his division toward Sharpsburg was someone those two beautiful women might not have recognized—restless, relentless, impetuous, and cursing like a stable sergeant.
Hill, thirty-seven years old, had already won a reputation in the Army of Northern Virginia as a fearless and able fighter, without peer as a division commander and with an unquenchable thirst for battle. His natural bent for war had surfaced strongly on the Peninsula, where he had thrown his division impetuously against the army of his dear friend and West Point roommate, George McClellan. At Cedar Mountain in early August his timely arrival had saved the day for another classmate, Stonewall Jackson. He was a fighter who could be relied on to be there when battle called.
Hill stared at the world through cold, almost colorless and penetrating eyes, and with a mien of quiet cynicism. Beneath the calm smoldered a pride and a hair-trigger wrath worthy of Achilles, capable of reacting fiercely to any slight, real or imagined. He did not fear to differ with generals above him. He had been known to criticize Lee, and he had bickered openly and bitterly—nearly to the point of a duel—with James Longstreet, his wing commander before Jackson. Even now he was quarreling with Jackson. Hill scoffed at men, such as Jackson, who sought the favors of an intervening Providence. That wasn’t for him. War to Hill was a calculating science, wholly man-made; Providence had nothing to do with it. Yet there was in him a streak of the superstitious. There was that red flannel hunting shirt he wore in battle—which he was wearing now—and the good-luck hambone from his mother that he always carried in his pocket.
Hill was a slender 5 feet 9 inches tall with a Grecian nose tapering from a high forehead. His hair, thick and auburn, tended to curl around his collar, and the tip of his full red beard nearly reached his breast. Normally he spoke in the soft low-pitched drawl of the southern cavalier, but his voice rose to a high feminine shrill when he became angry or excited, as in battle. He was quick with a wry jest, often teasing his couriers under fire. His laugh, when he was amused, came in a whisper ending with a quiet “key! key! key!” When not riding into battle he sometimes dressed the cavalier, in a close-fitting double-breasted gray tunic with dark trousers tucked into black polished leather boots almost to the hips, with a brass spur on the right heel. He often wore a large black campaign hat rimmed in gold and black cord, and carried white buckskin gauntlets. When reconnoitering he sometimes wore a long black cape, with a curved artillery saber jutting from beneath. (The saber was now unsheathed and he was using it to prod his army toward Sharpsburg.) Pistols, field glasses, and a tobacco pipe carved by one of his soldiers completed his ensemble. But whether dressed as the cavalier with the gold stars of his rank on the collar of his coat, or in the insignia-free red shirt that made him indistinguishable from the men he led, he was clearly a general.
He was not so much the general, however, that he wouldn’t snatch up his pistol and join his men in a squirrel chase now and then. A squirrel in a tree invariably set up a hideous clamor, such as Jackson’s men used to greet rabbits. Terminally unstrung, desperate, and bewildered, the little animal would leap toward the next tree, sometimes thirty feet or more away, with branches often far beyond its capacity and dreams. When it plummeted to the ground, the army in full cry picked up the pursuit. In a voice roaring above the others, Hill would shout, “Stand aside, boys, and let me get a crack at him!”2
What Hill wanted on September 17, 1862, was a crack at the Yankees in Sharpsburg. His fast-marching division was drawing closer by the moment. The din of battle, as morning passed into afternoon, could still be heard. There might still be time.
It was the nature of this supremely ironic war that Hill was marching to attack one of his best friends. McClellan was there and he had to be struck. And Hill would strike—as hard as he could, as he always did, as if Mac were the most hated of his enemies, rather than the dear roommate of his West Point years. How many cigars had these old friends shared down through two decades? How many warm moments of tender friendship, grounded on mutual trust? They had even loved and courted the same beautiful woman.
There was a story going around the Army of the Potomac about that. The soldiers knew that McClellan and Hill had both wooed the lovely Nelly Marcy, and that McClellan had won her hand. The talk, wholly fictional, was that Hill somehow held this against his old friend. The Union soldiers were sure of it. On the Peninsula and since, it seemed that every time the rebels attacked with such demon ferocity, it more often than not had been Hill’s doing. Whether struck in the front, flank, or rear—especially in the early morning—it was by Hill’s division. McClellan’s soldiers began to tire of this harassment, laying it to Hill’s spite and vengeance over the loss of Nelly Marcy. Early one dark morning, before either the sun or the federal army had risen, there came again the dull thud of artillery and the rattle of musketry, telling them Hill was again beating reveille. The long roll in the Union camp was followed by commotion and confusion everywhere and a rush to arms. One weary veteran rolled from his blanket in disgust and cried out, “My God, Nelly, why didn’t you marry him!”3
That was the story they told about this happily married man in the red battle shirt, who adored the wife he finally did win, but who perhaps loved war as much, and was driving hellbent for Sharpsburg.
There were old friends and classmates other than McClellan waiting up the road. Hill knew that Burnside was there somewhere. If Hill had a closer friend than McClellan, it was Ambrose Burnside. After Hill had been put back a year into the class of 1847, his best friends had been Julian McAllister, Henry Heth, and Burnside. The four had been inseparable, the social lions of the class and dear friends. Hill’s friendship with Burnside had deepened in the years since. Hill had loaned him $8,000 before the war, a debt still owed but very hard to collect in these divided times.4
Indeed, there could have been a class reunion on the banks of the Antietam if the times had not been so troubled. Sam Sturgis was there commanding a Union division in Burnside’s corps. George Gordon, John Gibbon, and Truman Seymour were all there commanding federal brigades. Couch was with his division near Harpers Ferry. Reno had been there, but was now dead. Among the Confederates were Birkett Fry, a victim of mathematics at the end of their second year, now a colonel in D. H. Hill’s division.
And there was Old Jack. The name was gall and wormwood to Hill. Jackson was now his corps commander and it was one of the unhappiest fits in the Confederate army. The outgoing Hill had never liked this strange, reclusive, and stubborn man. He had not liked him at West Point and he didn’t like him now. Nor did Jackson, not celebrated for his affection, waste any of it on Hill. Indeed, even as Hill marched toward Sharpsburg on this September afternoon, he was technically under arrest, put there by Jackson but two weeks before. He was back in command of his division only because Jackson knew there was no better fighter in the army than Hill, and the moment demanded fighters.
Putting his commanders u
nder arrest was not a personal thing with Jackson. He had put virtually every general who had ever served under him—Ewell was an exception—under arrest at one time or another in this war. But Jackson no longer had Ewell. Less than a month before, at the battle of Groveton on August 28, Ewell was irrepressibly being a company commander again, personally leading one of his regiments into the fight. As he was dismounted and kneeling to observe the direction of the Union cross fire, a fusillade shattered his right knee, and he had lost the leg.
Jackson’s sense of duty was as stern as his sense of Jehovah. He had arrested the unfortunate Richard Garnett at Kernstown, and others after him. Brigadier General Alexander Lawton, commanding Ewell’s division in this Maryland campaign, told his brother-in-law, Edward Porter Alexander, that he was the only division commander in Jackson’s entire corps who was not at that moment in arrest.5
Hill had run into trouble, as they all did, for what Jackson perceived as a failure to obey orders—a failure to do his duty as Jackson saw it. Jackson had observed that Hill tended to be lax about marches that didn’t matter, and had mildly reprimanded him for it earlier in August. Hill didn’t seem to take Jackson’s strict orders about marching seriously enough. He permitted altogether too much straggling, and he didn’t conscientiously observe Jackson’s hourly rest stops. It was exasperating. On the way to Maryland this character flaw had landed Hill in arrest.
Hill did not take reprimands or interferences with his division in good grace. So when Jackson personally halted one of his brigades on the way to Maryland, Hill galloped up and demanded, “Who halted my command?”
“I did, sir,” said his brigadier.
“By whose orders?”
“By orders of General Jackson.”
Hill swung from his saddle in a towering rage, strode up to Jackson, and presented his sword.
“If you take command of my troops in my presence, take my sword also,” he thundered.
“Put up your sword,” Jackson said coldly, “and consider yourself under arrest.”
A short time later, orders came down the line for Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, Hill’s ranking brigadier, to assume command of his division.6
For more than a week Hill had ridden at the rear of his division awaiting formal charges. One of his soldiers remembered him with “an old white hat slouched down over his eyes, his coat off and wearing an old flannel shirt, looking as mad as a bull.”7
Marching with his division but having no authority to command it was more than Hill could long stand. After they crossed the Potomac on the way to Harpers Ferry he sent for Henry Kyd Douglas. It was evident, Hill told Douglas, that a battle was at hand and he didn’t want anyone else to lead his division if there was to be a fight. He asked Douglas to say to Jackson that he wished to be restored to command until the fighting was over, when he would report himself again under arrest. Douglas galloped back and put this proposal to Jackson, arguing that no one could command Hill’s division as well as Hill could. He didn’t need to tell Jackson that. Besides, Jackson could never refuse a request to be permitted to fight. Hill was restored to command.8
The moment the order came down, Hill threw on his coat, fastened his sword about his slim waist, mounted his horse, and galloped up the line to the front of his troops, looking, one of his soldiers said, “like a young eagle in search of his prey.”9
Throughout the rest of the march, through Martinsburg and the investment and capture of Harpers Ferry, Hill’s division with him back in front had done the important work.
Now it was marching to Sharpsburg. The beckoning guns continued to thunder up ahead, louder than ever.
At 8:00 that morning McClellan had sent a message to Ambrose Burnside. Burnside had been waiting with his Ninth Corps in front of the bridge on the Confederate right since the night before. He knew that at a signal from McClellan he was to cross the bridge, roll the Confederate right back into Sharpsburg, and cut off the rebel army’s only line of retreat across the Potomac. He knew that it was to be done in concert with a crushing blow against the Confederate left.
All through the early morning he had stood with Brigadier General Jacob Cox and watched the assault against the left. They had looked down between the opposing lines as they would have looked down an open street. They saw the federal assault slam into the Confederate line, then stall. They had watched anxiously, uncertain whether the Union line would now collapse or hold, charge or retreat. Then the message arrived from McClellan; Burnside’s turn had come. He read the order and handed it to Cox, who would command the corps in the coming attack.10
Only David Rumph (Neighbor) Jones, commanding a thin Confederate line of two thousand troops, stood between Burnside and Sharpsburg. Lee had been diluting his right all morning to save his left. As each command came up from Harpers Ferry he shuttled it up and down the two-mile front to buttress Jackson and Longstreet and D. H. Hill. Jones had been left with his depleted division to defend a line a mile long, to keep the Federals out of Sharpsburg, to divert disaster, and hope A. P. Hill would come up in time. It was beginning to have the hopeless look of a last stand.
Cox was to open the Union assault on the bridge with the Second Brigade of his own Kanahwa Division—mainly Ohio troops—commanded by Colonel George Crook. But in the first of a chain of events frustrating Burnside almost beyond endurance, Crook couldn’t find the bridge. He had come out on the Antietam at an awkward point north of the crossing and into a withering fire from across the creek. It was virtually impossible from his position to carry the bridge.
Sam Sturgis waited in reserve behind the Antietam with his Second Division as Crook groped for the bridge and couldn’t find it. Now Cox turned to Sturgis, much as John Sedgwick at another moment four years before had turned to him to save the command from a buffalo stampede. Sturgis wasn’t in the habit of failing, and he immediately threw his Second Maryland and his Sixth New Hampshire at the bridge. They found it, but it was at that moment on that day the most undesireable crossing of any creek in America. It was a starkly exposed bridge that had to be approached over a long stretch of road that ran for several hundred yards parallel to the creek. Those several hundred yards and the bridge itself were entirely exposed and unprotected from any weapons that might be trained on them from the heights on the other side of the creek.
And the weapons were there. Confederate Brigadier General Robert Toombs had been waiting to use them all morning. He had been waiting since the war began for just such a moment. Soldiering wasn’t Toombs’s natural occupation. He was a politician, a powerful one, who had represented Georgia in the U.S. Congress before his state had seceded, and had been one of the most eloquent voices raised in the South for secession. After secession, he was for a time the Confederate Secretary of State. Then he had gone for a soldier, and he wanted to be a successful one. Now he waited on the bluffs above the bridge with the Second, Twentieth, and Fiftieth Georgia, of Neighbor Jones’s stripped-down division. It was fire he must now deal out, not oratory.
Toombs had only five hundred muskets. But he had the advantage of terrain. As Sturgis’s Second Maryland and Sixth New Hampshire ran up the road toward the bridge, Toombs turned all five hundred of those muskets loose, virtually point-blank. The federal plan was for the two lead regiments to cross the bridge and fan out on the other side, as other regiments poured across behind them. The two lead regiments, however, never reached the other side. The rain of fire from Toombs’s musketry drove them back. Again and again Sturgis threw men at the bridge and nobody crossed alive.
At Union headquarters as the morning wore on, McClellan grew more and more impatient and irritated. He sent another messenger to Burnside, then another. Still the bridge hadn’t been crossed. The opportunity for the federal left and right to operate in concert was fast slipping away. All that had come back from “Old Burn” was vague word that he had not yet crossed the creek and couldn’t carry the bridge.
“What is Burnside about?” McClellan snapped. “Why do we not hear from h
im?”11
He sent yet another messenger. Now harried and frustrated and nearly as nettled by the string of incessant messages from McClellan as he was by his inability to carry the bridge, Burnside sent Sturgis a virtual ultimatum: Take that bridge “at all hazards.”12
Earlier in the morning Union Brigadier General Isaac Rodman had started down the creek with his reinforced Third Division to try to find Snavely’s Ford and cross it on the Confederate flank. But the ford hadn’t been where they had supposed it to be, and Rodman still wasn’t across. The little creek was proving itself a Confederate ally. Every resident within miles of the Antietam knew that all around the bridge, above and below, there were fords closer than Snavely’s that could have been easily crossed out of range of the rebel guns on the heights. But nobody in the single-minded fixation with getting across that damnable bridge had seemed to consider that.
By now it was getting on toward one o’clock in the afternoon. The fighting on the Confederate left and center had all but ceased. On the heights above the bridge, about half of Toombs’s five hundred muskets had also been silenced, but he had not been driven out.
Now Sturgis called up his twin Fifty-firsts—the Fifty-first New York and the Fifty-first Pennsylvania—and ordered them to charge the bridge with the bayonet, but from a different angle this time. They started from behind a spur fronting the bridge instead of approaching up the deadly parallel road. The two regiments swept over the slope in front of the bridge and broke into a sprint, scrambling across and on to the other side. At about the same time, Rodman’s troops finally crossed Snavely’s Ford. Toombs, facing disaster now in front and on his flank, pulled back into Jones’s main line of resistance before Sharpsburg. But the politician had risen to the occasion as a soldier. For half a day he had kept the left and right of the Union army from acting in concert. He had frustrated McClellan’s central design.13