by Bruce Catton
Down the slope they came, nearer and nearer, the Confederates crouching low in their trench, officers standing just behind them, the whole field seeming breathless with suspense. Then, at a shouted command, the Rebels leveled their muskets and fired, and a long sheet of flame ran from end to end of the sunken road, a wave of smoke drifted up the hillside, and the Yankee charge ceased to look like a holiday parade. The first line of the assaulting wave was almost torn to pieces. The men halted, tried to re-form, and the Southerners, reloading with desperate haste, stood up and whacked in another volley. Back up the hill went the Northerners, to pull their broken lines together and come down again; but the Rebel fire was too heavy. The lines swayed to a halt halfway down the slope, and the men sprawled on the ground to return the fire from the sunken road, both sides volleying away at the closest range, while the terrible tumult of battle rose to a higher pitch than ever. The leading Federal brigade finally faded back, and French sent another one in to take its place.
Beyond the sunken lane were more Rebels in a cornfield (not the cornfield: this one belonged to a man named Piper), and they fired over the heads of the men in the lane, tearing the Yankee lines. Rebel guns came up on the high ground back by the Hagerstown road, and the great uproar of the battle was deepened and increased as Federal guns beyond the Antietam marked these Rebel batteries for destruction. The Southern gunners were in a hard spot. They were under orders to forget about the Yankee guns and attend to the infantry —this was the last line of defense, and if the Yankees broke through here it would be the end; and whole batteries of long-range rifles beyond the creek concentrated their fire on the Confederate guns, hammering the line from end to end, smashing gun wheels and limber chests, dismembering gunners, sending shells through whole ranks of waiting battery horses. Once a shell found a Confederate caisson and blew it up with a crash that resounded above all the din, while an immense cloud of black smoke shot upward. Never had the Southern batteries taken such a fearful pounding; throughout the rest of the war they remembered this battle as "artillery hell."
It was hell for the infantry too. The strange, frenzied, illogical exaltation of spirit that descended on the fighting men at times in this battle visited the troops who assaulted the sunken road and the troops who defended it. Once a group of Rebels scrambled out of the road and charged straight up the hill in a mad, doomed counterattack, shook the Yankee line briefly, and then went all to bits in the fire; one Federal who helped to repulse this attack said none of the Confederates got back to the lane. Farther north, some courageous Southern artillery officer rolled two guns out into an open field, and a mass of yelling Rebel infantry came out to beat in the right flank of the Yankee line. Red-faced French, storming and swearing with excitement, pulled the 8th Ohio and 14th Indiana out of line and sent them over to meet the threat, and the Westerners fired until their muskets were hot and foul, their ammunition gone, and half their men down. From somewhere in the rear a section of Yankee guns came clattering up, and the Rebel advance was driven back.
An immense sheet of smoke covered the battlefield, like a low thundercloud that was forever pulsing and glowing with lightning.
The ground underfoot shook and trembled with the everlasting jar of the guns. The bam by the Roulette house was jammed with wounded men. Screams, prayers, and curses made it a horrible place, with hundreds of anguished men packed together on the straw begging the surgeons to attend to them—surgeons bare-armed and fearsomely streaked and spattered with blood, piles of severed arms and legs lying by the slippery operating tables, the uproar of the battle beating in through the thin walls. Stragglers from the fighting line crept into house and outbuildings and drifted downhill toward the creek, where the valley gave shelter.
French's division was fought to a standstill, but new troops were coming up. Franklin arrived on the field with his army corps from the valley north of Harper's Ferry, and he put a brigade in line on French's right to prevent any further flanking maneuvers by the Rebels there. What was left of Greene's division was pulled back from its lines around the Dunker church, to join this brigade of Franklin's; and to the south Sumner's third division, Richardson's, got across the creek at last and prepared to go into action. Richardson rode along the line—strictly business this morning, with the eccentricities of camp all shelved—and he shook out the Irish Brigade with the golden harps on its emerald flags to spearhead the attack.
Between the general and the Irishmen there was a warm friendship, and it all started because of a sly dodge worked by a member of Richardson's staff. Early in the war, when the Irish Brigade was first assigned to Richardson's division, this staff member—Captain Jack Gosson, himself as Irish as Dublin—felt that it would be fine if the general got a good first impression of the new brigade. So when Richardson started over to make his first inspection Gosson rode on ahead of him. He found the three regiments all drawn up, waiting, and he spurred up and addressed them eloquently about the merits of their new commander.
"And what do you think of the brave old fellow?" he cried at last, inspired to a great and beautiful he. "He has sent to our camp three barrels of whisky, a barrel for each regiment, to treat the boys of the brigade; and we ought to give him a thundering cheer when he comes along."
This made sense to the Irishmen, and when Richardson came up they threw their caps in the air and gave him one of the most spirited ovations of the war. Naturally this pleased Richardson very much, he being ignorant of Captain Gosson's stratagem, and ever afterward he was especially devoted to the Irish Brigade. The complete nonappearance of the whisky was not held against him, somehow; probably the boys could recognize an artful Irish trick when they saw it. At any rate, this was Richardson's pet brigade and he was the brigade's pet general, and when he came up they yelled loudly and went swinging up the hill with their green flags snapping.5
They came up just in time, for French's men were in serious trouble. One brigade had been broken and the other two had been taking a deadly pounding, and the Rebels had mustered some new men and sent them forward beyond the lane, on the higher ground, to crush the Union left flank. The Irishmen went charging into this flank attack with savage power, the oncoming Confederate line halted to meet them, and on the open field there was a terrible shock of point-blank fire too hot for any troops to endure for long. General Meagher, who led the Irishmen, decided that the only way out of it was straight ahead—his men could charge or they could retreat; the one thing they could not do much longer was stand there and take it. He edged a few squads forward to tear down a fence that rose in their way, and then he stood up in his stirrups, raised his sword high, and shouted over all the battle thunder: "Boys! Raise the colors and follow me!" The green flags went tossing up and onward, the Irishmen cheered again, and the Rebels slowly fell back into the sunken road, where they rallied and poured out a fire which the Irish Brigade remembered afterward the way Sedgwick's men remembered the fire in the West Wood—the heaviest they had to face in all the war. Half of the 63 rd New York fell in that first volley, all of the brigade color-bearers went down, and the men who snatched up the fallen flags went down likewise—carrying the colors was a mean job in that war, for hostile fire was always directed at the flags. A bullet killed Meagher's horse in full gallop, and the beast fell heavily, knocking Meagher out so that he had to be carried to the rear. The advance came to a halt a hundred yards from the sunken road, the Irishmen hugged the ground, and the last of their ammunition gave out.
Richardson was close behind, and he sent a fresh brigade through them while the Irish soldiers went to the rear to get more cartridges.
Still under fire, they marched to the rear in columns as orderly as if they were on the drill field, with no straggling, although the four regiments in the brigade were down to five hundred men now. Richardson met them as they came out, rode up to Lieutenant Colonel Kelly of the 88th New York, and cried: "Bravo, 88th-I shall never forget you!" and the exhausted soldiers gave him three cheers. Then Richardson rode back to
the front, and his fresh troops pushed forward until they were within thirty yards of the sunken lane. All up and down the half-mile length of that little country lane in front of French and Richardson the air was ablaze beneath the smoke, and all the fury of the battle was coming to a new climax.
Everything seemed to happen at once. D. H. Hill found a gap between French and Richardson and sent troops forward, while other Confederates went prowling around to the south and east, trying still another flank attack around Richardson's new line. The first counterattack was broken up easily, and Richardson spotted the second one just in time and sent the 5th New Hampshire off to meet it. This regiment's Colonel Cross had a scalp wound, and had bound a red bandanna around his head. He took his men in with the grim warning: "If any man runs I want the file closers to shoot him. If they don't, I shall myself." The New Hampshire boys set off on a run through a ragged cornfield, collided with a North Carolina regiment on a little knoll, and halted for a vicious fire fight amid the tattered cornstalks. Richardson came up on foot—hatless, bare sword in hand, his face like a storm cloud. He had just pricked some skulking major out of a hiding place, and the men heard him shouting: "God damn the field officers!" He got into the front line, the men surged forward with him, the North Carolinians gave way, and the flank attack was beaten off.
There was a pause. The sunken lane and the main Confederate line lay just ahead, the heated air was full of drifting smoke and flying bullets, winded men snatched breath in convulsive gulps as they nerved themselves for a new advance. Colonel Cross, the old Indian fighter, got in front and turned to face them, face black with smoke, eyes flaming.
"Put on the war paint!" he yelled. The soldiers grabbed grimy cartridge papers and smeared their sweaty faces with soot. "Now give 'em the war whoop!" shouted Cross.
Cheers went up in a wild falsetto chorus. The colonel swung his arm, and the line moved on. To the right the 81st Pennsylvania began to advance at the same moment. Still farther to the right, Colonel Barlow got the 61st and 64th New York regiments up to high ground where they could enfilade part of the sunken lane. For the first time the Southerners there came under a fire that was too hot to take, and they began to back away. Then at last the whole line caved in, the sunken lane was abandoned, and yelling Federals ran down the slope, clambered over the fence rails, and fired at the backs of the retreating enemy.
French's men were too dead-beat to do more than form a new line in the captured roadway, but Richardson's men were fresher, and anyway, Richardson was a driver. He lost little time sorting out the scrambled commands but took them on as they were, into the rolling fields south of the lane, so that they swarmed over the Confederates' second line, broke it, and went plunging down into hollow ground in the angle between the sunken road and the Hagerstown pike.
Once more the battle had come to a moment of supreme crisis, and final victory was within reach. The Confederate General Hill, imperturbable in the midst of disaster, somehow scraped the ultimate bottom of the barrel and got together a handful of men from his beaten command and led them forward in a new countercharge - taking a musket himself, it is said, to lead them in person. Barlow saw it coming and broke it up, and Richardson went off to get some artillery. His infantry got down into the hollow and drove the Confederates out of Mr. Piper's farm buildings, but there the disorganized attack lost its impetus, and by a supreme, despairing effort the Rebels kept them from going any farther. Richardson reappeared with Battery K, 1st U.S., and planted it on a hill south of the sunken road; it silenced a couple of Rebel smoothbores near the Hagerstown road, then came under a heavy fire and began to lose men. Richardson had the battery commander move back, cautioning him to save his guns and men: there would be a big advance just as soon as Richardson could get his division realigned, and the general wanted the battery in shape to accompany it.
The battery withdrew readily enough, as ordered, getting into a more sheltered spot where the Rebel fire wasn't quite so bad; and, apparently from nowhere and by magic, there appeared a well-dressed civilian with a two-horse carriage, who drove up without paying any attention to all the bullets, pulled up his horses, alighted, and began to hand baskets of ham and biscuits to the dumfounded gun crews. This done, he invited the wounded men to get into the carriage so that he could carry them back to a dressing station. As they got in he walked forward to inspect his team, a shell fragment having slightly wounded one of his horses. Satisfying himself that the animal was not badly hurt, he saw that the wounded men were comfortable, waved his hat cheerily to the astounded battery commander, and drove off—an unnamed man of good will who shows up briefly in the official reports and then vanishes as mysteriously as he came.8
At this moment Lee's battle line was a frayed thread, held by scraps and leftovers of tattered commands who clung to the ridges by the Hagerstown road and fought like automatons. Batteries had been hammered all to pieces: a mile to the rear, officers and men were working feverishly with wrecked gun carriages and limbers, trying to make patchwork repairs so that at least some could be put back in service. Longstreet, who held top command along this part of the line, had sent his own staff officers in to work the guns of one ravaged battery and was standing nearby holding their horses and helping to correct the ranges. The only infantry in his immediate vicinity was a lone regiment which was completely out of ammunition, waving its flags vigorously to create an illusion of strength. He had called for reinforcements, but there were none to be had, except for a few worn-out skeletons of regiments and some stragglers rounded up and sent back into the fight. The Confederates were still keeping up a brave fire, but there was no weight back of it—no possibility that it might suddenly flare up into a great, obliterating wave of destruction in case of need. Many years later Longstreet confessed that at that moment ten thousand fresh Federals could have come through and taken Lee's army and all it possessed.
The ten thousand fresh Federals were at hand, and to spare. Franklin's army corps was on the field, and Franklin believed that he had brought it there to fight. Richardson's division was still in good shape despite its terrible losses. Franklin was preparing to advance and Richardson was moving guns up, getting his ranks reassembled, making ready to attack beside him; and at this distance it is very hard to see how that attack could ever have been stopped.7
The only trouble is that it never was made. Bringing some guns up to a new location, Richardson was hit by a rifle bullet and was carried off the field—only slightly wounded, it seemed, but in a few days an infection set in and the wound killed him. Barlow went down, desperately wounded. McClellan detached Hancock from his own brigade and sent him in to take Richardson's place, so there was still a fighting commander up front; but white-haired old Sumner, senior officer on this part of the field, shaken by the disaster in the West Wood and by the killing he had seen since, countermanded the order for an offensive and forbade Franklin and Hancock to attack. Franklin argued hotly, but Sumner was unyielding; he had seen nothing but catastrophe that day and he firmly believed half of the army had been scattered, and he told Franklin that if his attack should fail the day would be lost beyond saving.
One of McClellan's staff officers rode up, bearing from the commanding general a suggestion that the army attack if possible, and Sumner cried out to him: "Go back, young man, and tell General McClellan I have no command! Tell him my command, Banks' command and Hooker's command are all cut up and demoralized. Tell him General Franklin has the only organized command on this part of the field!"8
Back to headquarters went this gloomy message. McClellan reflected on it briefly, considered once more the danger of being overbold—and upheld Sumner. The ten thousand fresh Federals Long-street was talking about stayed where they were, and Lee's frayed line held.
Late that afternoon there was one final flare-up. The 7th Maine was detached from the front line and sent forward to drive Rebel sharpshooters out of the Piper farm buildings, down where Richardson's drive had reached high-water mark a few hours earlier.
The little regiment got to the farmyard, chased the sharpshooters, found itself surrounded in an orchard, cut its way out, and came staggering back to the lines with sixty-eight men around the colors—it had set out with 240. A Vermont brigade which had watched the whole performance stood up in the lines and cheered as the exhausted soldiers came back. The skipper of the Maine regiment remarked afterward that if only that Vermont brigade had been sent forward in support they could have broken the Rebel line even then; up at close quarters he had seen for himself how weak the Confederate defenses really were.
But that was just one more of the might-have-beens. North of the town of Sharpsburg the fighting was over. The Federals drew their line partly in front of and partly behind the sunken road—the road itself was so full of dead men, so horrible with its torn fragments of flesh, its congealing pools of blood in ruts and hollows, that it could no longer be used as a trench.
3. All the Landscape Was Red
In the four years of its existence the Army of the Potomac had to atone for the errors of its generals on many a bitter field. This happened so many times—it was so normal, so much the regular order of things for this unlucky army—that it is hardly possible to take the blunders which marred its various battles and rank them in the order of magnitude of their calamitous stupidity. But if some such ranking could be made, this battle of the Antietam would surely be represented. Here, if anywhere, the soldiers were thrown into action and left to fight their way out. There would have been unqualified disaster if the generals had not been commanding men better than themselves.