by Bruce Catton
558.
2. Details from A History of the 11th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
3. See A Soldier's Diary: The Story of a Volunteer, by David Lane.
4. History of the 45th Regiment Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry, by Allen D. Albert.
5. See the sprightly History of the 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, by Thomas H. Parker.
6. Writing some years after the war, General Hill made this argument himself, but indignant Southerners—who were inclined to blame him for losing Special Orders No. 191 in the first place—howled him down. It does seem, however, as if he almost had a point
7. For the experiences of the Black Hat Brigade, see Gibbon's Personal Recollections and Dawes's Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers.
8. Gibbon's Personal Recollections.
9. See History of the 5th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers and Penn-
sylvania at Antietam.
10.Battles and Leaders, Vol. H, Part 2, p. 558; The Bivouac and the Battlefield; History of the 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, and History of the 12th Massachusetts Volunteers.
11.History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry and Joseph K. F. Mansfield: A Narrative of Events Connected with His Mortal Wounding, by John Mead Gould.
3. Tenting Tonight
The literature on Antietam is, of course, extensive, but most of it pays little attention to the wasted day of September 16, when McClellan was flexing his army's muscles. The various articles in Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2, are helpful, particularly the one by General Cox. Palfrey's The Antietam and Fredericksburg is excellent and draws attention to the strange mix-up which occurred in connection with the command of the three "wings" of the army. Henderson's Stonewall Jackson makes clear the opportunity which McClellan lost by his inactivity on this day. It should go without saying, probably, that anyone who writes about the Army of the Potomac will get an invaluable indirect light on that army from Douglas Southall Freeman's books about its great opponents— R. E. Lee and Lee's Lieutenants.
Specific references are:
1. For an analysis of the discrepancy between the numbers on McClellan's rosters and the numbers that could actually be put on the firing line, see Francis Winthrop Palfrey's The Antietam and Fredericksburg.
2. Under the Old Flag.
3. For Burnside's account of this, see his article in Battles and Leaders, Vol.
I, Part 2, pp. 660-63. One would give a good deal for a stenographic report of
his staff's remarks about the transfer.
4. A Military History of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
CHAPTER SIX 1. Toward the Dunker Church
Considering the fact that Antietam was a head-on, slam-bang fight with no involved tactical maneuvering, it is a battle whose details are uncommonly hard to trace. Principal reliance, of course, is placed on the innumerable reports in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XIX, Part 2; but one is hampered by the fact that each commander, from corps down to regiment, seems to have assumed that his own outfit had the hardest assignment and gave and received the deadliest blows. In addition, there are great discrepancies from report to report in the descriptions of the ground, statements of numbers involved, and accounts of time sequences. And if the reports of the Federal commanders are hard to reconcile, it is even harder to dovetail them with the Confederate reports; one sometimes has the feeling that the Federals and Confederates are describing two different battles.
Palfrey's The Antietam and Fredericksburg is perhaps the best account of the battle. General Cox wrote of it extensively, both in Battles and Leaders and in his own Military Reminiscences, An excellent narrative is contained in Lieutenant Colonel William Allan's The Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, and the descriptions in Freeman and Colonel Henderson are extremely detailed and vivid.
Specific references are:
1. For details, see History of the First Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry; The 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion; Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight, Lieutenant Colonel, 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, and Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers.
2. "How Does One Feel under Fire?" by Captain Frank Holsinger, in the Kansas Loyal Legion Papers.
3. There is a good picture of this fighting in Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers.
4. General Gibbon described the fighting of Battery B in his Personal Recollections. See also The "Ulster Guard" and the War of the Rebellion, by Theodore B. Gates, and Theodore M. Nagle's Reminiscences of the Civil War.
5. This may be a good place to indicate the vast difference between the numbers listed as "present for duty" and the numbers actually engaged. On the books, Hooker had 14,856 men in his I Corps, and it is usually assumed that he sent approximately that number into the fight. Actually, it is very hard to see how he could have had more than 9,000 men in action. He had three divisions —those of Meade, Ricketts, and Doubleday. In the official reports Meade stated that his division went into action "under 3,000 strong," and Ricketts said that he took 3,158 men into the fight. Doubleday did not give the strength of his division, but it seems quite certain that it was no stronger on the firing line that morning than the other two. It contained four brigades. One—Hoffman's—was detached as flank guard and did not get into the fighting at all. Of the other three, at least two were far under strength. Gibbon's four regiments were probably under 1,000 strong, all told: he says he had fewer than 1,200 men at South Mountain, where he had 280 casualties. Phelps's brigade, according to the report of its commander, took only 425 men into action at Antietam. The remaining brigade, Patrick's, consisted of four New York regiments which had seen much service, and 1,500 would be a liberal estimate of the brigade's strength.
6. For Mansfield in action, see Joseph K. F. Mansfield: A Narrative of Events Connected with His Mortal Wounding; A Brief History of the 28th Regiment New York State Volunteers, by C. W. Boyce; Pennsylvania at Antietam; The 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion, and History of the 3rd Regiment of Wisconsin Veteran Volunteer Infantry.
2. The Heaviest Fire of the War
A detailed description of the way in which Sumner put his corps into action, with especial reference to the unwieldy formation adopted for Sedgwick's division, is contained in Walker's History of the Second Army Corps. The same points are also considered at some length in Palfrey's The Antietam and Fredericksburg. Sumner did not survive the war and so is not represented in the polemics which cluster around all Civil War battles; his own ideas about the action, however, are presented in an article by his son, Major General Samuel S. Sumner, in Vol. XTV of the Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts.
Specific references are:
1. The Antietam and Fredericksburg.
2. History of the First Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, by R. I. Holcombe. This author remarked that his entire brigade had been drilled to fight in close order, in the obsolete elbow-to-elbow manner. The Confederates, he added, never made that mistake; "a hundred of them would string out for more than a quarter of a mile, or cover an acre." It may actually be true that the Confederate private's refusal to concern himself overmuch about the niceties of drill was a positive asset on the battlefield.
3. Two of Sedgwick's three brigade commanders, Generals Gorman and Dana, in their official reports characterized the Confederate fire here as the deadliest they ever saw. One of the most striking things about this whole battle, indeed, is the frequency with which Federal survivors described the Southern fire as the worst in their experience. That testimony comes from men who fought in the cornfield and along Bloody Lane, as well as from the men in Sedgwick's division.
4. Reminiscences of the Civil War, by General John B. Gordon. The good general's memory may have betrayed him in regard to the use of the drum during this charge.
5. For a gay account of this incident, see The Irish Brigade and Its Campaigns. In his Days and Events, Colonel
Livermore records that General Sumner once exploded at Gosson: "Mr. Gosson, if you were not such an incorrigible rascal I would cashier you." A graduate of Dublin University, Gosson had seen service in a European hussar regiment.
6. This amazing anecdote appears, not (as one would suppose) in some imaginative regimental history, but in the official report of Captain William M.Graham of Battery K, 1st U.S. Artillery. It can be found in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XIX, Part 2, pp. 343-44.
7. Another misconception of the number of Federals engaged at Antietam
arises from the common assumption that Franklin's corps was thrown into
offensive action. Actually, only one of Franklin's brigades saw any serious fight-
ing—a total of five men were killed in all the rest of the army corps—and most
of the loss of the one brigade which did fight was incurred by one regiment,
the 7th Maine.
8. Under the Old Flag.
3. All the Landscape Was Red
One of the things which helped to make the Antietam a badly fought battle appears to have been a misunderstanding as to the nature of the attack which Burnside's IX Corps was supposed to make. Burnside and Cox evidently understood that the attack was simply to be a diversion, to relieve the pressure on the right of the Federal battle line, while McClellan seems to have wanted an attack that would more or less go hand in hand with Hooker's. An argument on this point—which, happily, we need not go into here—became quite heated, during and after the war, and led to coolness between the once firm friends, McClellan and Burnside. Anyone who is interested may study the pros and cons in McClellan's Own Story and in Cox's account of Antietam in Vol. II of Battles and Leaders.
Specific references are:
1. Major Henry Kyd Douglas of Stonewall Jackson's staff lived in the immediate vicinity of Sharpsburg and had an intimate personal acquaintance with Antietam Creek. In his book, I Rode with Stonewall, he is extremely sarcastic about Burnside's difficulty in crossing the stream. ("Go and look at it," he writes, "and tell me if you don't think Burnside and his corps might have executed a hop, skip and jump and landed on the other side."
2. For the story of the whisky, the attack on the bridge, and Ferrero's subsequent promotion, see the engaging History of the 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers.
3. Personal Recollections of the Civil War, by Stone.
4. Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 661-62.
5. For a rather pathetic picture of the plight of the rookie soldiers, see History of the 16th Connecticut Volunteers, by B. F. Blakeslee. Additional interesting details are to be found in Forty-six Months with the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers, by Corporal George H. Allen, and in the official reports of Colonel Edward Harland, commanding Rodman's second brigade, and Colonel Joseph Curtis of the 4th Rhode Island.
6. Interestingly enough, in a letter to his wife from in front of Richmond, just after the battle of Seven Pines, McClellan told of receiving a flag-of-truce message from a Confederate commander in his front, and said: "Well, whom do you think the letter came from? From no one else than A. P. Hill, major-general commanding the Light Division."
7. An examination of that grim barometer of military pressures, the list of killed and wounded, shows what happened in Burnside's corps. Rodman's division was almost torn to pieces by Hill's counterattack, and Sturgis's division lost heavily during the assaults on the bridge, but the divisions of Cox and Willcox had losses which—by the standards of that terrible day—were comparatively light. It is to be noted that no two of these four divisions were at any time under heavy fire simultaneously.
8. Battles and Leaders, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 656.
9. Under the Old Flag.
10. Following the Greek Cross.
4. The Romance of War Was Over
Military critics are still discussing Lincoln's removal of McClellan, and the majority seems to feel that the removal was a profound mistake. Considered strictly from a military point of view, this is possibly correct. The basic problem with McClellan, however, was always more political than military, and to understand and appraise Lincoln's action it is necessary to study the political history of the times rather than the reports of military action. After September 1862 the dominant fact was the Emancipation Proclamation. Nothing in the Official Records sheds any real light on the change in commanders. Actually, the explanation is in McClellan's letters, if you read them carefully, and the thing to study now is the fascinating self-portrait which is so unconsciously and revealingly painted in McClellan's Own Story. The McClellan quotations in this chapter are, with one exception, drawn from that book. The verse at the end of the chapter is from Awhile with the Blue, by Benjamin Borton.
Specific references are:
1. Gibbon's Personal Recollections; Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers.
2. The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade.
3. Gibbon's Personal Recollections.
4. The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade.
5. Under the Old Flag.
6. Musket and Sword.
7. History of the Second Army Corps. Be it noted that this talk about the romance of war comes from an officer, and a general at that. The private soldier who had fought at Antietam had no more illusions about war's romance than the veteran of Okinawa.
8. See History of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry, by W. N. Pickerell, and Forty-six Months with the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers. The theory that McClellan was to replace Halleck is recorded in A Duryee Zouave.
9. A Soldier's Diary.
Index
Abolition sentiment, in Cabinet, 198— 200, 206-7; in first year of war, 69-71, 79-80; of McClellan, 152. See also Emancipation Adams, Charles Francis, 322 Allen, Major E. J. See Pinkerton, Allan Amputations, necessity for, 188-89 Andrew, John A., governor of Massachusetts, 70, 73, 159 Antietam, battle of, 211-322: advance on Sharpsburg, 305-14; Bloody Lane, 291-98; casualties of, 318-19; cornfield, action in, 266-89; crossing of creek, 301-5; Dunker church, 266, 281; East Wood, 257-58, 269-71, 277-79, 283, 289; Federal strategy after finding lost dispatch, 215-22; layout of battle area, 245-51; lost Confederate dispatch, 211-15; results of, 316-17, 320-22, 323-25; South Mountain, battle of, 222-45; West Wood, 272-73, 281, 285-89
Aquia Creek, navy action at, 86 Army of Northern Virginia. See Confederate Army of Northern Virginia Army of Potomac, character of, 14-25; grouping into corps, 94—95; health and medical discharges in, 183-84; living habits of, 178-83; record of,
32; after Second Bull Run, 160-62; strength of units, 184-86; welcome to McClellan after Second Bull Run retreat, 50-52. See also Antietam; Bull Run; Peninsular campaign
Army of Virginia, 28-33
Army Secret Service. See Secret service
Artillery, improvement in weapons of, 190-91. See also Weapons
Assault tactics, 191-92
Averell, Colonel William, 138, 140-41
Baker, Colonel Edward D., 74-78
Ball's Bluff, battle of, 73-78
Baltimore, plot to assassinate Lincoln in, 120-21; reception of Union troops in, 170
Baltimore and Ohio railway, 8, 56
Banks, General Nathaniel P., 28-29, 169, 243; during peninsular campaign, 104, 106; at Second Bull Run, 47
Barbara Frietchie incident, 220 Barlow, Colonel Francis, 203-4, 297, 299
Barton, Clara, 316
"Battle Hymn of the Republic," 39-40 Bayonet, use of, 187-88 Beans, baked, 183
Beauregard, General P. G. T., 66-67, 117
Benjamin, Judah, Confederate Secretary of War, 121
Berry, General Hiram G., 150
Biddle, Colonel Charles, 166
Black Hat Brigade, 17-19, 163, 173, 217, 320; at Antietam, 267, 272; at Second Bull Run, 19-25, 40-41; at South Mountain, 238-39
Blair, General Frank, 203
Blanket rolls, 194
Blenker, General, 104
Bloss, First Sergeant John McKnight, 212-13
Boonsboro. See South M
ountain, battle of
Bragg, General Braxton, 160
Brigade, numerical strength of, 185-86
Bristoe Station, Va., action at, preceding Second Bull Run, 27
Brooklyn-Manhattan rivalry, 177
Buchanan, James, 70
Buckingham, General, 328
Bucktails. See Pennsylvania, 13th Regiment
Buford, General John, 27, 205 Bull Run, first battle of, 57, 193 Bull Run, second battle of, 1-52, 19-51; civilian volunteer nurses at, 11-12; Gainesville, 20-23; Northern reaction after, 159-60; preliminary situation, 3-10; retreat from, 42-52 Burnside, General Ambrose, 220, 255-57; at Antietam, 254-57, 301-3, 307-13; made commander of Army of Potomac, 327-28; at Second Bull Run, 26 Buskirk, Captain David, 167 Butler, General Ben, 200
Cabinet, presidential, plans for running war, 198-99
Cameron, Simon, Secretary of War, 153
Cannon, 190-91
Casualty figures, interpretation of, 189-90
Cavalry, Confederate, 10, 71; Federal, 10, 205-6. See also Harper's Ferry garrison
Centreville, Va., in Second Bull Run,
10-13, 44-45 Chandler, Zachariah, 199 Chantilly, Va., battle at, in Second
Bull Run retreat, 44-46 Chaplains, 176-77
Chase, Salmon P., Secretary of Treasury, 82-83, 93, 129, 198 Chicago Tribune, quoted, 169 Chilton, General R. H, 212, 213 Civil authority imposed on military,
79-83, 92-95 Cobb, Colonel, 18 Coffee ration, 182 Cogswell, Colonel Milton, 76-77 Cold Harbor, first battle of. See
Gaines's Mill Colgrove, Colonel Silas, 213 Command of Union Army, problem
of, 198-207 Complaints of soldiers, 174-75 Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, accession of Robert E. Lee to command of, 125; lost dispatch, plans disclosed by, 212-15; quality of leadership of, 200-1, 207; spirit of, 48; strength of, at Antietam, 251-53, 298; strength of, in peninsular campaign, 108-9, 121-23. See also Antietam; Bull Run; Peninsular campaign
Connecticut volunteer regiments: 8th, 308; 11th, 304; 12th, 185; 16th, 259, 310-11, 313 Contrabands (escaped slaves), 180 Cooking army meals, 178-83 Copperhead movement, 154—55 Cox, General Jacob, 12-13, 202; at Antietam, 257, 303-4, 311; at South Mountain, 220-21, 233-35 Crawford, General Samuel, 278-79