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Antietam 1st Battle of Manassas 2nd Battle of Manassas Fredericksburg |
The fighting at Antietam is most ferocious in the morning when Union soldiers begin to assault the Confederates in Miller's Cornfield.
For 3 1/2 hours, the battle lines will shift back and forth through the North Woods, the East Woods, the West Woods and the Cornfield. All are north of where the Visitors Center is today.
When Union Major Gen. Joseph Hooker first begins to march forward, the Confederates bombard his troops with artillery placed half a mile away on Nicodemus Heights. The Union soldiers are frightened by the cannonballs that come whizzing by them at 700 and 800 mph.
"The attack will be savage as Hooker's men move forward against the Confederates posted behind those rail fences west of the Hagerstown Pike, in the north edge of the West Woods," said Edwin C. Bearss, the former chief historian for the National Park Service.
Fighting in the 30-acre cornfield is intense. The battle lines are less than 250 yards apart and soldiers shoot at each other as fast as they can load their rifles.
One Texas regiment would lose 186 of its 226 soldiers, including two companies that were wiped out to the last man.
"One of the Texas officers in charge of the Fourth Texas was a berserker," Bearss said. "He would strip himself to the waist and he would carry an ax, a double-headed ax, into battle in lieu of a sword."
Union batteries, searching for Confederates concealing themselves in the cornfield, begin raking the field with cannon fire, spewing out canisters of iron and lead balls like huge shotguns.
The battle smoke at times becomes so thick, that nothing of the opposing lines can be seen but their flags. Incredibly, soldiers have to hold their fire because they can't see their targets.
Hooker's attack drove deep into Jackson's Confederate lines, but Jackson's desperate counterattack at 7 a.m. drives the federals back beyond the Cornfield and into the East Woods.
"There's terrible fighting and then savage fighting in which General Hooker will say that the corn stalks are cut off as close to the ground as if cut with a scythe," Bearss said.
By 7:30 a.m., the troops are spent and shattered. Some 5,600 soldiers on both sides are dead or wounded -- almost the same number of American troops killed during the D-Day invasion of World War II.
But this is only the beginning.
For the next 90 minutes, the federals continue to attack -- a total of six different assaults this morning. But the thrusts aren't coordinated. The battered Confederate lines are stretched, but they hold.
One of the Union thrusts is a corps of 7,200 fresh Union troops led by Major Gen. Joseph Mansfield.
As Mansfield's troops move forward toward the East Woods, two Confederate brigades move up on a ridge in front of him and prepare to fire
"Suddenly, Mansfield's men come under fire," Bearss said. "Mansfiled raises a question: 'Are they friend or foe?'
"Mansfiled rides a little out in front to investigate. And as he approaches a fence, there is a shot. And this man, who is commanding troops in battle for the first time in more than 30 years in the army, is mortally wounded."
Mansfield, who was eating breakfast when a trigger-happy Hooker began his first advance, becomes one of six generals to be mortally wounded during the day-long battle.
Ambush in the West Woods
By 9 a.m., the action has shifted to the West Woods. It's disaster for the Union forces.
They try a sixth assault, this time with two divisions of nearly 10,000 men. The idea is to turn the Confederate's left flank, throw the rebels into chaos and drive them in to the streets of Sharpsburg.
But it doesn't happen.
One of the divisons led by Union Major. Gen. William H. French gets lost during the mile-long westward march and then suddenly veers to the south where it later smashes into Confederates hidden in the Sunken Road.
The other division of nearly 5,400 Union troops under Major Gen. John Sedgwick march toward the West Woods.
Union Major Gen. Edwin Sumner orders the ill-fated advance into the WestWoods without sending skirmishers out to scout the area, Bearss said.
He'll wish he had.
Unknown to Sumner and Sedgwick, the woods are full of rebels anxiously waiting to spring a deadly ambush, Bearrs said.
When the Union soldiers come within range, the Confederates level their British Enfield rifles and unleash a murderous fire from two directions. The results are horrifying; the guns are deadly accurate up to 300 yards.
Within 20 minutes, about 2,200 Union soldiers are killed or wounded by an enemy they couldn't even see. One Union colonel will later write that he lost 60 men before his soldiers could get off a single shot.
Union troops trailing the initial assault hold their fire in fear they'd shoot into the backs of their own men, Bearss said. Both Sumner and Sedgwick are shot, but survive.
Union troops lucky enough to escape the slaughter flee the West Woods as the Rebels, led by regiments from South Carolina, give chase.
"The South Carolinians will surge across the Hagerstown Pike, letting go the rebel yell as they pursue the shattered Union force," Bearss said.
But the rebels stop when they run into Union artillery that begins to blast away at them.
By 10 a.m., the fighting in the northern part of the battlefield is over.
The fighting shifts half a mile to the south at Sunken Road, a hard clay road that had beeen worn down through the years by rain and wagons. It was used primarily by farmers who wanted to bypass Sharpsburg.
By the end of the day it would have a new name: Bloody Lane.
From his headquarters over at the Pry house, Union General George B. McClellan doesn't realize until later that this road has six angles, and that it's all one road. He thinks it's several different roads, Bearss said.
That shows how detached McClellan was from the battlefield that day, Bearss said. Confederate General Robert E. Lee knew it was one road that zigzagged toward the Boonsboro Pike (Md. 34).
"Lee's command post is generally where the National Cemetery is today," said Edwin C. Bearss, the former chief historian for the National Park Service. "Lee circulated the battlefield. Lee kept his hand on the pulse of the battle."
Fighting at Sunken Road began shortly before 10 a.m.
 The fighting now moves further south to a 125-foot-long bridge spanning the Antietam Creek. It was called the Lower Bridge or Rohrback Bridge then, but after this day it will become known as Burnside Bridge. Union General George B. McClellan would say later that he kept prodding Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside for most of the morning to storm the Lower Bridge and the heights beyond to inflict heavy damage to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's right flank and cut off his retreat to Virginia. Burnside would claim, however, that the orders to march his 12,000 troops and 50 cannons were sent too late. At 10 a.m., Burnside had split his troops. One division is sent downstream to cross a ford. The rest stay behind to storm the bridge. Crossing the bridge proves to be a monumental task. On the other side are about 400 Georgian sharpshooters posted atop a steep, wooded bluff. They are backed up by a mere 2,000 rebels who distance themselves from the bridge. Although Burnside's force outnumbers the Confederates more than 5-to-1, it takes three hours and two disastrous assaults to finally cross. By 1 p.m., the federals finally gain a foothold on the western bank and the rebels retreat. But Burnside has lost valuable time. Another two hours go by before his entire corps crosses the bridge and begins marching toward Sharpsburg. "By this time the situation looks bleak for the Confederates," said Edwin C. Bearss, the former chief historian for the National Park Service. Between 12:30 p.m. and 1 p.m., Confederate Major Gen. A.P. Hill, wearing the red flannel shirt he always wore into battle, arrives at Sharpsburg and reports to Lee that 3,000 of his men left Harpers Ferry at 7:30 that morning. They were crossing the Potomac River some three miles away. By 2:30 p.m., Lee is nervous. He looks to the south and can see Burnside's men approaching out of the valley at Antietam Creek. "Unless troops arrive, the Army of Northern Virginia is doomed," Bearss said. "He suddenly looks out to the south and west and he can see troops coming." "He calls to one of his officers and he asked him to train his glasses on them," Bearss said. "He trains his glasses on the flags and reports they are Confederate flags, not United States flags. Lee knows Hill is at hand." Hill, who covered the 17 miles from Harpers Ferry to Sharpsburg in seven hours, slams into the Union's left flank. The federals suffer casualties of about 20 percent, but there are still more than 8,500 troops -- about twice the number of Confederates. Yet, Burnisde scrambles back to the heights above the bridge, saving Lee from disaster. The Union still has one more chance to crush the rebels, but blows it, Bearss said. Late in the day, a Union officer suggests to McClellan that they stage a head-on attack at Lee's center in the vicinity of Sunken Raod, the weakest part of the Confederate's battle line. Union Major Gen. James Longstreet, who helped lead the Confederate forces at Sunken Road, later wrote that one last attack by the Union with 10,000 or more men could have crushed Lee's army. The Union still had 20,000 soliers in reserve, soldiers who had seen little or no action all day. McClellan, who by this time is stunned by the magnitude of the losses, still seems somewhat interested in one last strike. McClellan turns to Major Gen. Fitz John Porter for advice. Porter, not anxious to mix it up with the rebels, says: "Remember General, I command the last reserve of the last Army of the Republic." McClellan, who always thought he was outnumbered, scraps the attack. He worries a Union loss at Sharpsburg could enable the Confederates to march unmolested to Washington, D.C., or Baltimore. "That was rather dramatic because the Army of the Potomac is not the last Army of the Republic," Bearss said. "And of course you can imagine a man of McClellan's temperament when he hears something like that from the general that he has the most confidence in. There will be no attack." By 5:30 p.m., nearly all of the fighting has ended. The sounds of rifle and cannonfire now give way to the cries and moans of thousands of dead and wounded soldiers scattered over the 12-square-mile battlefield. The next day, both sides call a truce to take care of their dead and wounded. McClellan makes preparations to attack on the morning of Sept. 19. But as soon as night falls on the evening of the 18th, Lee's battered army slips across the Potomac River at Pack Horse Ford near Shepherdstown, W.Va. The Confederate's first invasion of the North has ended in retreat. It is the first of a series of rebel losses over the next three weeks. Historians say the South's biggest threat against the North crested with Antietam. "The tide rolls on westward as the Confederates pull back," Bearss said. "Never again will the Confederate Army throughout the 1,000-mile front be so poised, so close to victory as they were on that 17th day of September 1862."
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