Chapter 6

The Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Sharpsburg

With

the impressive Southern victory at Second Manassas, the strategic initiative in the East shifted dramatically to the Confederacy. But aware of the North’s seemingly limitless manpower, Lee needed a strategic plan to keep the Federals off balance, and prevent another movement on Richmond. A strong offensive movement towards such a goal seemed obvious. A direct attack on Washington was out of the question. The disparity in numbers of troops generally, and the manpower behind the massive defenses ringing the Northern capital argued strongly against it. Instead, Lee settled on an invasion of Maryland as the answer. Such an operation would keep the Union forces out of Virginia, thereby allowing both its people and land to recuperate from the destructive havoc war had wrought thus far. North of the Potomac, his army would pose a constant threat to Washington. And, a victory in the North might have epochal foreign policy implications: the Confederate government craved foreign recognition to legitimize its cause, garner foreign assistance, and perhaps induce England or France to mediate a resolution of the conflict.1

More immediately, the Army of Northern Virginia needed food, clothing, and recruits. Moving into Maryland would allow its inhabitants, a large portion of whom were believed to be Southern sympathizers, to manifest their allegiance and provide needed recruits for the army, considerably depleted by the summer’s campaigns. Further, Lee believed his army could move from Maryland into Pennsylvania and disrupt the North’s east-west rail communications and carry the brunt of the war into that rich land, gathering abundant stores in the process. A thrust into the Union heartland, coupled with victories over their Federal foes, might even coerce the already war-weary North to accept a negotiated peace.2

Alternatively, a strong argument could be made that Lee’s army should go into camp for much needed rest following Second Manassas. It had already been fighting and marching for ten straight weeks without cessation. Thousands of its men were shoeless, most in rags, and all hungry. Even defeated, the Union army remained twice the size of Lee’s. However, Lee, a great commander, continually defied the odds. He gave little thought to retreating behind the Rappahannock or into the Shenandoah Valley to rest and resupply. “He had the initiative and was loathe to give it up.” So the best opportunity to win the war was to strike anew the “much weakened and demoralized Union army,” as he explained in a September 3rd letter to President Davis. The North would never give up if the Confederacy remained on the defensive.³

Meanwhile, morale in Washington sunk to its lowest point in the war, and people feared for the safety of the capital. Many began to question the terrible sacrifice being paid on the battlefield to preserve the Union. Lincoln was keenly aware of the army’s demoralization. He had approached Ambrose Burnside about assuming overall command, but the general felt such a task beyond his capabilities. There appeared, therefore, no real alternative to the uncooperative, even insubordinate, McClellan. Finally, on September 2, Lincoln visited McClellan and requested of him to take command of all the Federal troops (his own and Pope’s) consolidated into Washington’s ring of defenses. A subsequent order expanded his authority over all those merged armies in the field. McClellan accepted, with his usual humility, because, “under the circumstances no one else could save the country.” Most of his cabinet vehemently decried Lincoln’s decision, believing it would spell yet another disaster. Lincoln, however, defended his reluctant decision, citing its practicality—no other officer could reorganize the army and cure the existing disorganization. While conceding that McClellan could not fight, the president proffered that “he excels in making others ready to fight.” And indeed, McClellan did bring order to the chaos, improved morale, and whipped the troops into fighting condition in short order.⁴

McClellan meant to stay between Lee’s army and Washington, and, if possible, destroy it. The rebuilt Army of the Potomac consisted of all forces in the Washington area, as well as a multitude of new recruits. Within four days, McClellan had organized this army and had it on the march from Rockville, Maryland. However, Little Mac, ever cautious and methodical, also knew the administration’s true opinion about his past record and leadership capabilities. Nevertheless, Lincoln yearned for a Union victory to allow the release of a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which had been ready since mid-summer. Such a proclamation, he hoped, would forestall intervention by foreign powers and reinvigorate the Northern cause with moral purpose to bolster lagging spirits and maintain the will to fight amidst the horrendous lists of casualties.5

With only one day’s respite after the battle of Second Manassas, Lee had his army moving again—this time northward. Jackson and his tired, hungry men set off on yet another wide flanking maneuver around the retreating Federal army. But fatigue kept his force from overtaking the fleeing Federals, and the chase was ultimately stymied during a torrential downpour at Chantilly, Virginia, on September 1, by the combined divisions of Maj. Gens. Isaac Stevens and Philip Kearny. After a short, fierce engagement, Jackson remained on the field, while Pope continued his retreat through Centreville and into Washington. Later that evening, Pope ordered all troops still in Centreville to march overnight to Fairfax Court House. The next morning Pope wrote Halleck expressing fatalism about further contact with Lee’s army, and admitting that he could personally accomplish no more. “You had best decide what should be done,” he advised Halleck.⁶

Meanwhile, the 5th Texas was marching with Longstreet’s command on September 1. Under a scorching sun, the Texas Brigade followed the same route as the retreating Federals, northeast along the Warrenton Turnpike, through Sudley Ford, as far as Centreville—a route strewn with all manner of military gear, from knapsacks and clothing to cooking utensils, discarded by the panicked Federals on the way. The regiment then swung north, passed Germantown, and camped a little beyond the town. The next evening, it passed through Frying Pan and arrived at Dranesville, where it turned left towards Leesburg, arriving there about 8:00 p.m. on September 4. The Texans received a rousing welcome from ladies of the town who turned out to cheer and wave. “How we did yell in response!” John Stevens later recalled. The houses, according to Lt. Watson Williams, “were brilliantly lighted up with an extravagant number of candles in the windows and the side walks of the streets … were crowded with ladies and children and many a ‘God bless you all’ was spoken out.” Some in the crowd, recognizing the Lone Star flag, shouted out, “Hurrah for the Texas Brigade!” The men moved through the town and went into bivouac near the river crossing at Big Spring, on Balls Bluff, where Brig. Gen. Nathan G. “Shank” Evans had given the Federals what one man called “an awful whipping” earlier in the war.7

General Hood did not command the division on this march north because he was under arrest. In the final hours of the battle on August 30, some of his Texas scouts captured several new Federal ambulances. Hood, in what he thought an appropriate action, expropriated them for his division’s sick and wounded. The ambulances were captured in a portion of the field under the command of General Evans, who was senior in rank to Hood. Evans, never an easy man to get along with, insisted that Hood turn the vehicles over to his South Carolina brigade. Hood stood his ground vehemently refused to do so. Evans’s troops, he argued, were in “no manner entitled to them.” The men who had captured the ambulances ought to ride in them. He would have been willing to turn them over to the army quartermaster, but not simply to someone who outranked him. So “he subjected himself to arrest and humiliation before he would see the men who had followed him over so many battle fields thrown out upon the road side when they were unable to follow him on foot to the next battle ground.” Evans ordered Hood’s immediate arrest, and Longstreet felt compelled to order Hood to Culpeper Court House to await a court martial. Lee soon countermanded that order and directed that Hood accompany the troops on the march, but at the rear of the column, as a prisoner.⁸

On the morning of September 5, the regiment moved up to White’s Ford, some four miles distant. The next morning, it crossed the Potomac into Maryland. Approximately 500 yards wide at that point, and two to three feet deep, the swift-running river at the ford teemed with men 600-700 yards up and downstream, yelling and singing “all sorts of war and jolly songs.” Eight to a dozen regimental bands played on the shore, each with a different song—“Dixie,” “Maryland My Maryland,” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” An island in the middle of the river forced a second plunge for the men back into the cold, swift water.9

Captain James Roberdeau of Company B recalled drying off that day, “with water sloshing out” of his shoes, and the men singing, “Jordan is a hard road to travel.” Stevens reported the men around him were exuberant and “apparently jolly,” but he “could not for the life of me suppress a feeling of sadness as I beheld this vast concourse of humanity wading the river, so full of music and apparently never once thinking that their feet (many of them) would never pass the soil on the south side of the Potomac again.”¹⁰

On September 7, the regiment marched north along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath and crossed the Monocacy River at the Monocacy aqueduct, proceeded through Buckeystown, and camped three miles south of Frederick on the banks of the Monocacy near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The regiment spent the next two days resting and bathing in the river with their clothes on (cleaning their bodies and clothes in one operation). The men also amused themselves by blowing up the railroad bridge spanning the river. Roberdeau reported, however, that its stone piers “withstood all assaults.”¹¹

On September 10, the regiment marched through the picturesque town of Frederick City, with its “clustered spires … green walled in the hills” of Maryland. Frederick’s inhospitable reception dashed all hopes the army might still have harbored of obtaining sizeable numbers of recruits and supplies from the area. Private Rufus Felder of Company E wrote, “I have heard a great deal of southern feeling in Ma[ryland], but I found it a mistake” because he discovered the majority of the populous definitely pro-Union. The brigade got its share of attention going through town, however. One young spectator confirmed with his mother that the soldiers then passing were “Texicans,” and then observed, “Oh Mama, they look just like our folks.” One elderly woman called out as the ragged troops marched by, “The Lord bless your dirty ragged souls.”¹²

The shabbiness of the invaders—clothed in patched and tattered rags, largely unshaven, unwashed, and always hungry—inspired little confidence among Marylanders. A woman in Shepardstown, just across the Potomac, encountered many of these fellows during the campaign. “When I say that they were hungry,” she emphasized, “I convey no impression of the gaunt starvation that looked from their cavernous eyes.” They often showed up on local doorsteps, begging for food.13

Clearly, Maryland did not respond as Lee had hoped. He had issued a proclamation on September 8 inviting the populous to join his command and restore the state to its rightful place “among the Southern States.” The choice was theirs, with no fear of recrimination. The response was tepid at best—few recruits and little assistance with much needed supplies. Lee realized that he had to move on into Pennsylvania quickly, as supplies, particularly shoes, essential to maintaining a fighting army were greatly wanting. His planned route of march followed the topography of the Cumberland Valley, a northern extension of the Shenandoah Valley, which ran diagonally through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. Lee intended to concentrate his force west of the mountains near Hagerstown, Maryland, which would put him in a direct line with his supply base at Winchester in the Shenandoah. Upon resupplying, he would move northeast through the Cumberland Valley to Harrisburg, where he could destroy the railroad bridge over the Susquehanna River. From there he could easily live off the land in middle Pennsylvania while being continuously within striking distance of Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Washington.¹⁴

For his plan to succeed, however, Lee had to clear the line of communications from the Shenandoah to Winchester and Richmond. The route was currently blocked by formidable Federal garrisons at Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg. They would have to be removed. To accomplish this, Lee decided to divide the Army of Northern Virginia into four parts; Special Orders no. 191, issued September 9, directed Longstreet and D. H. Hill to proceed across South Mountain toward Boonsboro and Hagerstown. Three other forces, all under General Jackson, would converge on Harpers Ferry from the northwest, northeast, and east. The column under Jackson’s direct control would move to the west while en route and hit any Federals remaining at Martinsburg. Stuart’s cavalry would screen these movements from McClellan’s observation by staying to the east of South Mountain.15

Lee realized his bold initiative courted disaster. The move entailed considerable risk, with his army worn out from the arduous march after Second Manassas, and the Army of the Potomac now only a day’s march away. However, Lee also knew McClellan, and he believed Jackson would have enough time to capture Harpers Ferry and reunite with the rest of the army before the Federals could become a serious threat. To make the plan work properly though, Jackson had to accomplish his mission and be marching north toward Hagerstown by September 12. This schedule would allow a reunited Southern army time to begin a rapid thrust up the Cumberland Valley and into Pennsylvania unopposed. But so confident of Jackson’s capabilities, as well as McClellan’s plodding cautiousness, Lee had not provided for guarding the gaps through South Mountain.¹⁶

The reminder of Lee’s army was not within supporting distance of Jackson’s five divisions, who had gone northward to fall upon Harpers Ferry. To prevent McClellan from reinforcing the garrison there, moving on Jackson’s rear, or cutting his army in two, Longstreet’s Corps had been sent forward to assist D. H. Hill’s infantry and Stuart’s cavalry in blocking the mountain passes around Boonsboro. Once clear of Frederick, on September 10, the regiment took the road heading northwest, passing through Middleton, the Washington or Old National Pike, amidst some of Maryland’s most “bounteous and beautiful” country. Stevens of Company K described it as “the finest road I ever saw, 60 feet wide, finely macadamized, up and down hill, across valleys and even where the little streams cross the road, there is a nice little trough for water to run in.” The road accommodated two wagon trains in the center, with room on either side for a four-ranked line of infantry to protect the trains. The men welcomed this improved road, since up till now, they had been choking in dust so thick that many times one could see no farther than one hundred yards ahead. The harder surface did take a toll on the large portion of the barefooted men, however. By September 11, the regiment had passed through the Catoctin Mountains, through South Mountain at Turner’s Gap on the 12th, and then through Boonsboro and Funkstown, finally arriving at Hagerstown on September 13, a mere five miles south of the Pennsylvania state line.¹⁷

There now occurred an event that drastically changed the outcome of the campaign for Lee. Stonewall Jackson had given D. H. Hill a copy of special orders no. 191, not realizing that Hill had already received his own copy. The Southerners had departed Frederick on September 10, and McClellan’s advance guard entered that town two days later. The next day McClellan himself was there and was granted a windfall “such that few generals in history have enjoyed.” Someone had found a copy of the special orders wrapped around some cigars in a former Confederate encampment—apparently being the original received by D. H. Hill. Its authenticity was indisputable: it was a godsend for the Union. “Now I know what to do!” an excited McClellan exclaimed, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip ‘Bobby Lee,’ I will be willing to go home.” Had Little Mac, with his new intelligence, immediately driven rapidly through South Mountain and interposed his army between Longstreet’s force, near Hagerstown, and Jackson’s at Harpers Ferry, he could have demolished each in turn. But quite in character, he failed to get underway until the next day, ultimately allowing Lee time to consolidate his force at the small town of Sharpsburg.18

Lee was greatly concerned about the fact that his army was still widely separated on September 12 when Jeb Stuart informed him that the Federals were approaching Frederick. Stonewall Jackson had still not captured Harpers Ferry by the 13th, and McClellan was forcing Stuart back toward the South Mountain range and its vital gaps. Jackson’s delay required that these gaps be defended at all costs. The Frederick-Hagerstown road led through Middleton, then through South Mountain at Turner’s Gap. At the eastern base of South Mountain, the Old Sharpsburg Road turned toward the south from the main road, passing through Fox’s Gap, one mile to the south of Turner’s Gap. Four miles farther south lay Crampton’s Gap, near Burkittsville, reached from another road coming south from Middleton. On the evening of September 13, Lee ordered all available forces to defend these three passes. D. H. Hill covered Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps, while Lafayette McLaws sent a portion of his force back from Maryland Heights, above Harpers Ferry, to hold Crampton’s Gap.¹⁹

By the morning of September 14th, the strung-out Confederates could observe the Union army marching up the roads toward the gaps. McClellan’s right wing, under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, attacked Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps while Maj. Gen. William Franklin’s left wing hit Crampton’s Gap. By that evening, the vastly superior Union force had broken through at the latter, and Burnside was close to taking the other two passes.20

Stuart sent word to Lee early in the morning of September 14 that McClellan had obtained a copy of special orders no. 191. Lee responded immediately by ordering Longstreet back through Boonsboro to support D. H. Hill’s infantry and Stuart’s cavalry in blocking the mountain passes. Polley later wrote that the Texans would have preferred to remain in Hagerstown, as the thunder of cannon in Frederick “proclaimed that ‘Little Mac’ was coming after our scalps,” and would soon be at Boonsboro. The 13-mile march back to Boonsboro was “fearful,” said Roberdeau, with practically all the men footsore, tired, and suffering from various illnesses incident to camp life.²¹

Through a forced march, Longstreet’s divisions reached Boonsboro by mid-afternoon on the 14th. As Hood’s Division came up, Longstreet ordered it to take a position on the left of the Washington Pike which passed through South Mountain at Turner’s Gap, where Burnside was then pressing D. H. Hill’s thin line. Hood, however, was still under arrest, but from the rear of the column, he could hear the Texas Brigade chanting, “Give us Hood! Give us Hood!” General Lee, astride his horse by the side of the road, heard every Texan passing by tell him, “[i]f there’s any fighting to be done by the Texas Brigade, Hood must command it.” Lee finally raised his hat and replied, “You shall have him, gentlemen,” and promptly notified Hood of his temporary release from arrest “until the impending battle is decided.” When the “gallant General, his head uncovered and his face proud and playful, galloped by to his rightful place at the head of the column, the cheers deepened into a roar that drowned the volleys of hundred cannons that were even then vengefully thundering at the Gap.” Roberdeau exclaimed how “[n]ever during my military experience had I witnessed such general satisfaction, and for the first and only time did I doff my hat and yell.”²²

Soon after arriving back at South Mountain on the 14th, Robertson collapsed from exhaustion. His shoulder wound from Gaines’s Mill had still not healed nor a more recent groin wound he’d sustained at Second Manassas. September’s heat proved too much for him and for many of the hungry, tired, and shoeless men of his regiment who also fell out along the way. Company K’s Capt. Ike N. M. Turner assumed command of the regiment, while the 18th Georgia’s Col. Wofford took command of the brigade. Robertson spent the ensuing battle in an ambulance.23

When the regiment and the rest of the brigade arrived back at Boonsboro at 3:30 p.m. on the 14th, D. H. Hill was already heavily engaged with a large body of the enemy, and the Texans could hear the victorious shouts of the Yankees in their front. Burnside’s men had gained the crest of South Mountain and were pushing their way through the scrub oaks down the west side toward Hood’s small division. Hood originally took up a position on the left of the Pike but was soon ordered to move to the right side to brace up troops on that part of the field. As the Texans marched to the right, they met Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton’s brigade of Jones’s division coming out, who indicated that the Federals had succeeded in passing to his rear. Hood therefore inclined his division even farther to the right, over the rugged country, and quickly placed his men in a position to receive the Yankees. The Texans soon checked this larger force with a well-directed fire. The Federals assailed Hood’s line several times, but they could only “utter a few huzzas and move up but a few paces, when another volley would check and cause them to waver and stagger like drunken men.” Hood then ordered his men to fix bayonets, and when Burnside’s skirmish line got within 75 to 100 yards, to “front and charge.” The enemy skirmishers quickly gave ground and “were driven pell-mell, over and beyond the mountain, at a much quicker pace than they had descended.” The onset of darkness stifled any further pursuit.²⁴

Early that evening, John Stevens and another soldier were ordered down the mountain some 300-400 yards to a fence where they laid in the thick brush. The Federal line lay about a hundred yards beyond the fence. In a corner with their guns pointed through the cracks between the fence rails, Stevens and his comrade were told to remain there until the Federals got within 20 feet, fire, and then fall back. After several anxious hours though, the Federals moved away, much to their relief. Hood learned later that night that McClellan, pushing through Turner’s Gap on his left in great strength, was thus outflanking him. Hood therefore abandoned his advanced position and fall back to the main Confederate line near Boonsboro. The Texas Brigade’s exact losses from the fighting at South Mountain or Boonsboro, although uncertain, are thought to have been light. Robertson listed 19 casualties for the three Texas regiments, including four wounded and six missing in the 5th Texas.25

Lee had purchased some needed time by defending the gaps and kept the Federals from relieving Col. Dixon Miles at Harpers Ferry. However, Lee, now no longer the master of his own destiny, faced a considerable dilemma. He had lost the initiative. His offensive plan for Pennsylvania was in shambles, and now only desperate maneuvers could save his entire army from destruction. He called off the assault on Harpers Ferry, but Jackson replied that the place was about to fall. If Jackson could invest the city by the next day, the army could still unite near Sharpsburg, on excellent defensive ground. And if victory proved elusive, the fords of the Potomac were still nearby. So Lee reluctantly allowed the attack on Harpers Ferry to continue.²⁶

Although the brigade’s participation in the fight at Boonsboro had been brief, the men had once again acted decisively, and another opportunity for fearless valor loomed. Given McClellan’s superior numbers, Lee withdrew his forces from South Mountain to a range of low hills just west of Antietam Creek near the village of Sharpsburg. Lee had determined to make a stand here while awaiting Jackson’s divisions from Harpers Ferry. “This position was regarded as a strong, defensive one,” according to Longstreet, “besides being one from which we could threaten the enemy’s flank or rear in case he should attempt to relieve the garrison at Harper’s Ferry.”²⁷

The Confederate consolidation at Sharpsburg began late that same evening and continued throughout the night and into the morning. “The battle at Sharpsburg was the result of unforeseen circumstances and not of deliberate purpose,” Roberdeau correctly observed. It became “one of the bloodiest of the war, and a defeat for both armies.” Hood’s division, supplemented by “Tige” Anderson’s brigade of Jones’s division, the batteries of Capts. James Reilly and W. K. Bachman, and elements of Stuart’s cavalry, served as rear guard of the army on the southward shift toward Antietam Creek. The Texas Brigade, as it had on previous occasions, brought up rear of the rear guard—the post of honor. Given their position in the line, the Texans did not begin marching until an hour before sunrise on the 15th. During the march to Sharpsburg, Federal cavalry often closely pressed the regiment, as part of this rear guard. As the march progressed, Lee ordered the sick and wounded back across the Potomac in preparation for a major fight, Sgt. B. A. Nabours of Company G, who was among this group, reported. Union cavalry pressed the column, but Roberdeau said “the old Washington artillery” kept it at bay by lobbing rounds over their heads.28

The brigade had been designated rear guard despite its exhaustion and hunger. Green corn and apples had provided sole sustenance since departing Hagerstown, and fresh provisions did not arrive until early on September 17, doubtless contributing to the “disease incident to camp life” Roberdeau had previously referenced. The poor performance of the Confederate commissary and quartermaster proved a bigger problem than the Yankees had been at Boonsboro. Lee’s proclamation forbade foraging in Maryland, but circumstances made foraging a necessity. The Texans, farther from home than any other troops, also suffered clothing shortages, for little of it, or shoes, arrived from Texas. “[T]hey were the most tattered and poorly shod of Lee’s veterans.” They had last received clothing issue after the Peninsula campaign in early July in camp near Richmond. Since then the brigade had fought a major battle and several significant skirmishes, marched some 250 miles, waded numerous streams and rivers, and scrambled through underbrush, brambles, and rocks. Consequently a good portion of the men looked like barefoot ragamuffins. If the rebel yell and bayonets frightened the Yankees, their gaunt, grimy, and tattered appearance doubtless added to it. Indeed, “[t]he bayonet, the Rebel Yell, the tattered clothes, the slouch hats and the bare feet,” Roberdeau observed, “must have presented an awesome sight to the well-fed and well-clothed Federals.”²⁹

Sharpsburg sat in a small valley near the western edge of Sharpsburg Ridge. The Boonsboro Pike led eastward across that ridge and Antietam Creek. The Hagerstown Pike headed northward along the crest of that ridge. From the Hagerstown Pike, gently rolling farmland spread a mile eastward to Antietam Creek and westward one mile to the Potomac River. One mile to the north stood a heavy patch of timber known as the West Woods, about 300 yards wide at the south end, and 200 at the northern end. Half a mile east of the Hagerstown Pike another wood, the East Woods, 200 yards wide, extended a quarter-mile across Smoketown Road. The North Woods, a triangular patch of trees, stretched east from the Hagerstown Pike over the Poffenberger farm. Nicodemus Hill rose a half-mile to the west near the Potomac. A forty-acre cornfield covered a portion of the open area east of the Hagerstown Pike while outcroppings of rocks ran almost parallel to the pike on its west. Adjacent to the Pike, on a slight rise near the lower end of the West Woods stood the Dunkard Church—a small, white building sitting among massive oaks. With its woodlands and rock ledges, Lee believed the ridge provided a formidable defensive position.30

The regiment arrived on the heights beyond Sharpsburg around noon on September 15, crossing Antietam Creek at Middle Bridge and taking a position in line of battle on the right of the Boonsboro Road in front of the town. The three days’ rations they received over two days ago were pitifully meager and included so little meat that the men “were therefore the sooner exhausted,” according to Joseph Polley. The effective strength of the brigade at this point was down to 850 men. The 5th Texas rested north of town, parallel to Antietam Creek, for the rest of the day. Soon, however, Hood received orders to move to the extreme left of the Confederate line, as the Federals were threatening an immediate attack on that flank. The Texans therefore shuffled two miles to the left (north), to a position on Hagerstown Pike at the West Woods near what they called “St. Mumma Church” (actually the Dunkard Church).³¹

The Texans therefore held the ground from the Dunkard Church near the intersection of Smoketown Road, northwest to Necodemus Hill, and they remained there through September 15 and most of September 16, under considerable fire from long range Federal artillery. Stuart’s cavalry protected the left flank of their line. From Hood’s line southward to Sharpsburg itself, D. H. Hill had positioned his five brigades east of and paralleling the Hagerstown Pike. Jones’s six brigades extended the line to the southeast almost a mile to the Lower Bridge over Antietam Creek. Lee placed his artillery at strategic positions along the prominent ridges. By the evening of the 15th, Lee had approximately 18,000 men in place in the field.³²

By noon that same day, McClellan had arrived in the area with over 75,000 men. Early on the 16th, Lee’s artillery sighted Federal guns on the banks beyond Antietam Creek, and an artillery duel soon erupted. By that afternoon, McClellan was ready for battle. Hooker’s I Corps took position opposite Lee’s left on the Hagerstown Pike. Maj. Gens. Joseph K. F. Mansfield’s XII Corps and Edwin V. Sumner’s II Corps soon extended the Federal line as far as Smoketown Road and then on to Antietam Creek near Pry’s Mill Ford. Porter’s V Corps occupied the center of the Federal line on the Boonsboro Pike, Burnside’s IX Corps stood east of the Lower Bridge over Antietam Creek, while Franklin’s VI Corps served as reserve to support the entire front. In the center on the high, east bank of Antietam Creek and south of Boonsboro Pike, Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt, chief of Union artillery, placed four batteries of 20-pounder Parrot rifles. The Federal plan called for an initial attack by Hooker and Mansfield on the Confederate left along the Hagerstown Pike.33

Sumner’s and Franklin’s corps would support the attack, if necessary. Then if that movement succeeded, Burnside would cross the creek at the Lower Bridge and hit the Confederate right flank southeast of Sharpsburg and, assuming success, then carry the attack northwest toward Sharpsburg. If either of these flanking movements proved effective, McClellan would then drive up the Boonsboro Pike with all remaining available forces. Properly delivered, the plan would stretch Lee’s outnumbered force to its limit. But as it had in the past for the Union troops, proper delivery proved elusive.³⁴

Early in the afternoon of September 16, Hooker’s corps reached the Hagerstown Pike from Keedysville. His divisions, some 12,000 men, were soon poised behind the North Woods for an attack on the Hagerstown Pike near the Confederate left flank—John Bell Hood’s troops. Hood had anticipated such an attack and positioned the Texas Brigade on his right, parallel to and just east of the Pike. Reilly’s and Bachman’s batteries, stationed near the Pike on a small knoll, supported the infantry. Lee’s thin line had stretched to some three miles long. Stonewall Jackson now commanded the northern portion of the Rebel line, having arrived with the majority of his troops early that morning after Harpers Ferry fell.³⁵

Near sunset on the 16th, Meade’s 1st Pennsylvania Rifles, the “Bucktails,” and the third brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves of Hooker’s corps began moving against the Confederate left, supported by significant artillery. Hood’s two batteries responded to the barrage, and the infantry engaged about sunset. Lee ordered Hood to advance his two brigades into position east of the Hagerstown Pike to counter any Federal thrust there, and the command immediately moved into its new position with Law’s brigade on the right, north of Samuel Poffenberger’s farm, and the Texas Brigade to its left. The Texans, fronted by a heavy skirmish line, moved about 700 yards across an broad open field, past the Dunkard Church, and as far as Miller’s cornfield.36

The commander of the 5th Texas, Captain Turner, ordered Stevens to select one volunteer from each of the ten companies to act as skirmishers. Turner was convinced the Federals meant to advance their lines in his front under the cover of darkness. The eleven volunteers eased their way forward in an effort “to feel for McClellan’s army.” “We felt of it and it felt of us, too,” Stevens later recounted. As they moved forward, Meade’s artillery opened on them, with good effect. The men advanced carefully for about 300 yards through a wood devoid of underbrush, soon right up to the Yankee pickets. The brigade formed and advanced behind the skirmishers; Wofford had the regiments in line of battle, with Hampton’s Legion on the left, then the 18th Georgia, the 1st Texas in the center, then the 4th and 5th Texas on the right. The 5th Texas “was ordered to the edge of the woods as a support for our skirmishers,” Turner later reported. Soon after 8:00 p.m., a large body of Federals stumbled onto Hood’s skirmish line a few hundred yards south of Martin Line’s house, and a fierce firefight erupted. “[T]he ball opened,” Stevens recalled, and suddenly they were in one of the hottest fights of the war. “The blaze from their guns was blinding to us, yet we kept pegging away.”³⁷

The Bucktails fought armed with their breech loading Sharps rifles, which, to the Confederates, never seemed to run out of ammunition. The Pennsylvanians did not attack conventionally, but rather advanced in echelon, with prone units providing covering fire from the rear. They “repeatedly ran a few yards then dropped [and] fought like Rebels,” one veteran Texan remembered. Law’s men, with their muskets and Enfield rifles, reluctantly began to fall back through the East Woods and its protective cover. As the Southerners neared the eastern edge of the woods, their slow withdrawal became more desperate. At this point a Rebel yell resounded, and the 5th Texas regiment bolted into the woods from the west and south. Taking the oncoming Federals by surprise, they exchanged volleys at point blank range. Soon, Stephen D. Lee’s Artillery Battalion pulled up close to the woods and began splintering tree tops with grape and canister.38

As the Texans advanced, they exchanged shots with the Yankees advancing through the North Woods to their front. Reilly’s battery, from a small knoll near the Pike, continued to support the Texans vigorously. In the gathering twilight, they checked the momentum and then drove Meade’s advance back into the East Woods. The firing continued well after darkness, but by 9:00 p.m., it had ceased. Hood’s were the only Confederate troops in this portion of the field, and yet they finally repelled and drove back the much larger force some distance. Stevens’s skirmishers lost five of their group, all dead, including Hardy Allen, color bearer of Company E and William M. House of Company H. Allen had been standing next to Stevens, who heard the ball as it struck him, “making a sound as though he had slapped his hands together.” House was then killed instantly just to Stevens’s right. At about 10:00 p.m., Stevens’s group was relieved and ordered back about 600 yards to rest.³⁹

Both sides bivouacked on the battlefield that night, close enough for the Texans to hear the Federals reinforcing their position in their immediate front; they could distantly hear the enemy’s orders to his troops massing on their front. Hood’s men had been the only Confederate infantry engaged on the 16th, but Lee now knew exactly what to expect in the morning. As Hooker’s troops withdrew, Mansfield and Sumner moved in to their support for the next morning’s engagement. During the reestablishment of picket lines on both sides, a drizzling rain began to fall.⁴⁰

After the fight, Hood rode to Lee’s headquarters to request that his division be withdrawn from the line for the night for his famished men to rest and “to cook their meager rations,” having not been issued any since the 13th. While Lee sympathized with Hood’s plight, he had no other troops to replace them. He thus directed Hood to General Jackson for possible assistance, and Hood immediately left to find Stonewall. Hood soon found him asleep beneath a large tree, its root an improvised pillow; Hood nudged him awake and stated his case.⁴¹

Jackson had already reorganized his line, shifting troops around to the north and west to meet the attack he knew would come at dawn, but he quickly agreed to spread his men thinner in order to give Hood’s hungry soldiers an opportunity to cook their rations. But they had to be kept close at hand, ready to come running if and when he gave the order. Thus, Jackson ordered A. R. Lawton’s and Trimble’s brigades to relieve Hood’s men in the line. Hood readily agreed to the arrangement, and before 10:00 p.m., his two brigades had retired southward across the Hagerstown Pike to the West Woods, in the rear of the Dunkard Church, there to kindle their fires and cook their rations.42

The Texans were destined to pass yet another night and most of the next day without any food, however. The supply wagons were late in arriving, and the men encountered considerable difficulty locating a good source of water in the dark. The rations finally arrived just before daylight—“a very small slab of bacon and a fistful of flour to each man.” Many of the men, too tired to eat, rolled up in blankets to sleep, thinking they would prepare and eat their meager rations later that morning. However, just before daylight on September 17, when many hungry soldiers finally began baking biscuits on their ramrods and eating their bacon, Federal artillery began to burst in their midst, and the picket firing intensified. Suddenly Drayton’s brigade burst in on their breakfast, driven there by the enemy. At 5:30 a.m., Hooker had opened fire from the East Woods and emerged from the North Woods and Poffenberger’s farm due south on both sides of the Hagerstown Pike headed toward the Dunkard Church, straight through the cornfield and along the Hagerstown Pike. Jackson’s waiting Confederates immediately greeted them with stiff resistance. But when the reserve units of Hooker’s corps entered the fight, their superior numbers began pushing the Confederates back. Artillery from both sides filled the air with shrieks and explosions of all kinds. Confederate artillery exacted a considerable toll among the oncoming Federals as they moved through Miller’s farm on both sides of the Pike. Badly mauled, however, Jackson’s men ultimately gave ground.⁴³

Hooker, trying to crush Lee’s left before all of Jackson’s troops arrived back from Harpers Ferry, had launched all three of his divisions (Brig. Gen. Abner Doubleday’s on the right, Meade’s in the center, and Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts’s on the left) abreast against the thinly held Confederate left line. Lawton took a position during the night in the field to the right of the pike, about 200 yards south of the cornfield, his line running about 50 yards east, then turning southeasterly for about 300 hundred yards. To Lawton’s right, the 12th Georgia formed the left of Trimble’s line, while Col. James A. Walker, with the rest of that brigade held Mumma’s Lane below the family cemetery. Federal divisions of Ricketts and Meade immediately attacked Lawton, Trimble, and Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays, who came to their aid. Hooker soon called a halt while six of his batteries came up and commenced flailing the fields with shell and canister, joining the crossfire from the heavier, long range guns on the ridge beyond Antietam Creek. As the Federals poured from the North Woods under cover of this intense artillery barrage and swept south across the cornfield and down the pike, they drove Lawton’s troops before them. As the bluecoats continued to pour through the cornfield, the Confederate line staggered and finally broke and retreated in disorganization.44

As the fog cleared the Antietam Valley at daybreak, the fighting rapidly became desperate. More of Jackson’s units charged into the struggle but were soon forced to fall back to their original positions. Lee kept shifting available units to hold this weakening line. The point blank fighting continued from Miller’s farm down through his cornfield, which was itself becoming a focal point of battle, with repeated attacks and counterattacks on both sides vying for its possession.⁴⁵

Hooker’s 10 brigades soon proved too much for Lawton, who requested assistance from Hood at 7:00 a.m. Hood’s troops still had food on their minds, despite the racket. “We all understood that we must work in a hurry,” Stevens wrote, “or go into battle with very empty craws.” They could not work fast enough, however, given the lateness of the commissary wagons. “[F]alling shot” from the advancing Federals “raked our bread pans, skillets and fires right and left, putting a complete check to all preparations for a much needed breakfast.” “To Arms” sounded in the regiment’s bivouac. The entire brigade sprang to its feet, reluctantly abandoning camp fires and half cooked rations. Companies and regiments formed, grimly awaiting battle instructions from Hood and Wofford.⁴⁶

At this juncture Jackson launched a blistering counterattack. Hood’s men formed around the hill in line of battle sheltering from the heavy storm of grape and shell. Within half an hour, they moved forward. Hood’s division had fewer than 2,000 effectives as he moved out of the West Woods, advancing diagonally to the right down the Hagerstown Pike and through an opening in the fence across from the Dunkard Church. His men soon reached Lawton’s Brigade, which had all but melted away, save for Gen. Hays and about 40 soldiers who remained with him.47

Hood advised Hays to retire, replenish his cartridge boxes, and reform his command. Lawton had been severely wounded by then, and he and Hays had lost more than half their men; Trimble lost over one third of his, and all the units were just about out of ammunition. Hood deployed with Law’s brigade on the right and the Texas Brigade on the left, with a line extending a quarter-mile from the Pike on the left and across Miller’s cornfield to the East Woods on the right. With support from Maj. B. W. Frobel’s battery, (S.C. Battery, German Artillery), and Capt. H. R. Garden’s Palmetto Artillery (Bachman’s and Reilly’s companies), Hood moved toward the fight over a field littered with Lawton’s casualties. Hood knew he would not be able to hold for long in the face of this artillery barrage, but he was determined to remain as long as possible. When one of Jackson’s staff officers, arrived to inquire about the situation, Hood grimly responded: “Tell General Jackson unless I get reinforcements I must be forced back, but I am going on while I can.” As the brigade advanced, it once again aligned with Hampton’s Legion on the left, then the 18th Georgia, the 1st Texas in the center, next the 4th, and finally the 5th Texas on the right flank.⁴⁸

As it turned out, Hood’s short-term chances were much better than he anticipated, as Hooker had by then given the assault his best shot. The long, unbroken, and unsupported line of fresh Confederates emerged out of the woods from the Dunkard Church and fired by files into the western flank of the Federal line. “Mad as hornets” at the interruption of their breakfast, the Texans entered the fight “with a wild rebel yell.” Soon, “[m]en fell like grass beneath a scythe,” and the Yankees raced back to the cornfield, some throwing away their Sharps rifles. Hood’s men came on “screaming like mad men,” moving out onto the high ground above S. D. Lee’s battalion, pressing forward toward the cornfield and the Smoketown Road. “The soul chilling Rebel yell echoed across the smoke-covered field as Hood’s wild men charged across the bloodied ground.” Hood’s troops advanced “with the same aggressive spirit that had characterized their movements in previous engagements and slammed right into elements of [Brig. Gen. John] Gibbon’s Iron Brigade.” They leveled their Enfields at the oncoming Yankees and unleashed a devastating volley that quickly halted the Union advance.49

Simultaneously, Law’s men moved toward the Federals in a northeasterly line, except for the 4th Alabama, which moved by the right flank down Smoketown Road toward the East Woods. Halfway through the field, Law halted his troops to meet the volleys of Brig. Gen. George L. Hartsuff’s Brigade of Ricketts’ division. The 4th and 5th Texas, on the right behind the 11th Mississippi, almost collided with its rear rank. The 4th Texas was ordered to lie down and hold fire until the Yankees could be clearly distinguished through the thick smoke. Lieutenant W. H. Sellers, formerly assistant adjutant general of the regiment, and at the time Hood’s aide, simultaneously ordered the 5th Texas to go prone. Meanwhile, the 18th Georgia and Hampton’s Legion and the 1st Texas rushed across the Pike and into the clover field beyond. Around this time, Pvt. Stevens took a bullet, and while lying on his back was hit yet again, rendering him unconscious. Meanwhile, the Georgians set off a rolling fusillade into the remnants of two Wisconsin regiments, which halted to deliver one last volley of their own before disappearing back into the cornfield.⁵⁰

Hampton’s Legion, entering the struggle with only 77 effectives, came up on the left of the line to the eastern side of the Hagerstown Pike and ran directly into the case rounds of Lt. James Stewart’s section of Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery. The guns were positioned some 30 yards to the right of the turnpike on a small crest with muzzles leveled toward the rail fence to its immediate front. Hood ordered Colonel Carter to move by the left to support the 18th Georgia and Hampton’s Legion as they advanced into the cornfield. So his 4th Texas advanced, moving left oblique at the double quick, to an area near the fence on the east side of the Pike, resting its left on the crest of the plateau. Ordered to move again, the 4th went directly up the hill on the left of the 1st Texas to the south edge of the cornfield.⁵¹

Within minutes, the Confederates had knocked out over half of the two gun crews of Stewart’s section, swarming his front and left flank. Then Capt. Joseph Campbell, the commander of Battery B, brought up his remaining four Napoleons. Soon, the entire I Corps began to bend like a twig as Law’s troops struck toward the East Woods, and “the entire shebang snapped!” Meanwhile, on the Smoketown Road, the Confederates noted the Federals heading toward them. Without orders, Capt. James Nesbit of the 21st Georgia (having sought permission and heard nothing) advanced his regiment into the field. Soon the entire Federal line from the East Woods to the Hagerstown Pike had “scattered like quail” before Hood’s screaming men. The Pennsylvanians, victims of vicious Confederate artillery fire from Nicodemus Hill, as well as the musketry of Law’s men, left 98 men in the field near the East Woods. Only 32 men out of 325 of Brig. Gen. George L. Hartsuff’s 3rd brigade were standing to escort their tattered colors from the field. Even counting the men who reported later, that brigade counted more than two out of every three men casualties in the engagement.52

When the Confederates had advanced halfway through the clover field below the cornfield, however, their charge began to lose momentum. Along the Hagerstown Pike, Hampton’s Legion, with the 18th Georgia on its right, had wheeled into the cornfield. They drove the Yankees almost back to the Miller farmhouse. Then, they abruptly wheeled left again, directly into the post and rail fence which ran past the southwestern corner of the cornfield. There, they halted to pick off some slower-retreating Yankees, concentrating fire on the color bearers. Private Elliott Welch of Hampton’s Legion recalled, “[n]ever have I seen men fall as fast and thick… I never saw rain fall faster than the bullets did around us.”⁵³

Hood soon realized, however, that his left wing was nonetheless in peril. The Yankees still had overwhelming numerical superiority here. He therefore ordered the 1st Texas to file by the left flank in support of Hampton’s Legion. Partially through the field, approximately at the Confederates’ original front, Colonel Work lost control of the regiment as it disappeared unsupported amongst the battered cornstalks. Unfortunately, thick smoke and an incredibly deafening sound permeating the scene, blotted out their exact location. Unbeknownst to him, Law’s Brigade was again on the move, sweeping on into the cornfield to his right.⁵⁴

The 18th Georgia herded the 6th Wisconsin to the north. On a small crest across the road stood what remained of Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, its remaining guns still leveled toward the rail fence in their front. The fleeing bluecoats quickly scaled the fence and scurried to the safety of the crest and the battery. The gun crews stood at the ready with double-shotted canister, and once clear of their own troops, the four Napoleons roared at point blank range into the fence along their front. The 2nd Mississippi dove to the ground behind the fence to the left of the battery; the 6th North Carolina and the 11th Mississippi did the same on the right of the battery. But the 1st Texas took the full blast of canister. “Fence rails flew through the air like straws in the wind. The cornstalks were flattened or sheared off and the men thrashed about on the ground like beached fish.” Hood called it the “most terrible clash of arms, by far, that had occurred during the war.” To another, he commented, the “earth and sky seemed to be on fire, and it looked like here would be the Thermopylae of the Texas Brigade.”55

Hood later recounted that his “two little giant brigades … wrestled with the mighty force,” and despite losing “hundreds of their gallant officers and men” still drove the foe from their ground, “and forced him to abandon his guns on our left.” The Texans still standing quickly rallied despite their heavy loss, and returned a volley into the gun crew, bringing down over half of them quickly. Soon, only one gun remained firing, and with each discharge it recoiled farther backwards until it finally sunk below the crest of the ridge. None of its crew noticed that the elevating screw had worked itself so low that its rounds all passed over the heads of targets. Gibbon, finally alerted to the problem, yelled for the crew to lower the screw, but the din of battle drowned him out, so he personally ran to the gun and cranked the screw down until the muzzle almost touched the ground to its front.⁵⁶

The 3rd Brigade of Meade’s division ultimately closed on the Texans in the cornfield. A 1st Texas volley into the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves brought down the color guard, but its charge into the cornfield had outstripped its support on both flanks. The 1st Texas and the Federal forces pushed each other back and forth across this 40-acre killing zone, trading places in the corn four times, the color bearers of the 1st Texas falling one after another.⁵⁷

Throughout the terrible fighting, the proud and distinctive Lone Star Flag had remained “visible above the cornstalks and smoke of battle in which the regiment had fought … representative of the intense pride the men felt.” When Colonel Work finally withdrew his shattered regiment, its ninth flag bearer of the fight was mowed down and the famous Texas colors lovingly sewn by Mrs. Wigfall was lost in the confusion. The flag had “started back with the regiment,” according to Val Giles of the 4th Texas, “but when lost no one knew it save him who had fallen with it.” It was “a source of mortification,” Work said, “that our colors were not brought off.” Over 1,200 Texans had cheered it “when it was kissed for the first time by the breeze of classic old Virginia. On the morning of September 18th, 1862, only forty-three of its gallant defenders answered to roll call.”58

The right flank of the Texas Brigade had overlapped the left flank of Law’s brigade as it advanced. Hood therefore ordered the 5th Texas to move to the right of Law’s troops, press forward, and drive the enemy out of the East Woods. Law had sent an orderly racing south to seek immediate support for his tenuous position. “Three times the enemy tried to check the 5th Texas” in the East Woods by advancing through the lower edge of the cornfield, and each time the Yankees failed. Meanwhile, to the east, the 2nd and 11th Mississippi and 6th North Carolina rose up along a low rail fence at the edge of the cornfield a mere 30 feet from the 4th and 8th Pennsylvania Reserves of Meade’s second brigade. Both regiments quickly panicked, and the 8th left almost half its number dead or wounded on the field. “So highly wrought were the pride and self-reliance of these troops,” Hood later said of the Texans “that they believed they could carve their way through almost any number of the enemy’s lines formed in an open field in their front.”⁵⁹

While Hooker’s forces sought shelter under cover of the Federal batteries in the edge of the East Woods, the Confederates faced another threat. Mansfield’s XII Corps had also advanced at the beginning of Hooker’s attack, and the corps commander urging the attack on had rushed to the front of his men upon seeing Hooker’s predicament.. He soon fell mortally wounded. Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams took over command and attacked over the ground Hood had just vacated. Part of Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford’s division (previously Williams’s) bore down the Hagerstown Pike toward Lee’s forces in the West Woods. Jones’s troops in an outcropping of rocks soon broke up the piecemeal attacks. Meanwhile, Stuart’s horse artillery quickly dispersed the remaining troops from its position on Nicodemus Heights, one and a half miles to the west.60

Hooker, astride his horse, stepped in at this point and urged the 10th Maine and 128th Pennsylvania of Crawford’s 1st Brigade that they “must hold those woods” at all costs, pointing them to the Confederates in the East Woods. As the 10th Maine descended through a swale and topped the next crest, it confronted a Confederate skirmish line along a worn fence abutting the wood’s edge. Closely massed, the regiment made an excellent target for the Rebel fire, until its commander, Col. George L. Beal, ordered it to move by the double quick into a regimental front.⁶¹

In the East Woods, three Confederate regiments awaited the Yankees’ arrival. The 4th Alabama and the 5th Texas holding the left and right respectively, had entered the woods during Hood’s assault upon the cornfield. The 5th Texas awaited nervously, their ammunition by that time running seriously low. Lieutenant Sellers, Hood’s aide, had sought fruitlessly for more cartridges from the rear. With the Yankees soon to be upon them, Capt. Turner knew his 175 men could not maintain their present line. The 21st Georgia under Capt. James Nesbit held the center of the line; he had sent his exhausted men beyond the tree line to face the 10th Maine, then negotiating the worm fence on the hill north of his line. When the Yankees halted to reform, Nesbit turned his men around and scrambled for the cover of the woods, taking shelter behind the trees. The idea was to draw the 10th Maine’s fire and thereby halt them. If this could be done, Nesbit could hold his position. If, on the other hand, the Federals did not halt to engage in a firefight, Nesbit, at the time considerably ahead of the rest of the Confederate line, would be forced to fall back. The Federals, however, took the bait; Nesbit allowed them to get dangerously close and then opened a sickening fire into their line. The Federal line was staggered and confused, while some of its men returned a desultory and disorganized fire.⁶²

But the Federals’ unusually rapid fire began bedeviling Confederates in the East Woods. The 10th Maine was using experimental cartridges which did not require biting them open in order to combust. The caps ignited both the paper and the charges simultaneously, and the rapid fire took its toll and kept the Rebels constantly dodging for cover. Their own low and accurate fire, though, exacted a deadly toll on the Union troops. Turner of the 5th Texas, his ammunition almost gone, watched anxiously as sizeable Union reinforcements marched out down a hollow from an area of timber 400 yards to his front and left. “Allowing them to get within 75 yards of us with lines unbroken,” Turner later reported, “I saw we would soon be hard pressed.” He tried four times to contact Hood for reinforcements. Sergeant Abner M. Hinson of the regiment’s Company D later reported that each man had gone through 80 rounds of ammunition, and even when they were used up, the regiment was still ordered to hold its position at all hazards. Turner asked his men if they had ammunition; Hinson answered affirmatively, having just taken some from a dead man’s cartridge box. “[G]o to that big tree in front and shoot all the officers and color bearers,” Hinson later recalled being ordered. “We agreed to go, but asked him not to go off and leave us, and he agreed to call us when he went to leave.”63

Effective fire of the New Englanders less than 50 yards from the 5th Texas line was dropping Turner’s men regularly. His remaining 90 effectives were fighting “Indian-style,” bushwhacking the enemy as it advanced into the woods. To their left rear, the ground between the Dunkard Church and the East Woods again swarmed with Confederate units. A Louisiana battery had moved north from the Smoketown Road ahead of the troops toward the southern portion of Miller’s clover field, while another section gave support from the Mumma farm. For 15 minutes, these batteries kept the Federals pinned until relieved by infantry. To the left rear of the 5th Texas, Col. A. H. Colquitt’s brigade of D. H. Hill’s division started from Mumma’s northern lane toward the cornfield, and Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland’s brigade, also belonging to Hill, moved into line along the fence south of Mumma’s farm.⁶⁴

Few reinforcements reached the embattled Texans. When Garland’s brigade finally advanced, one of its regiments, the 5th North Carolina, broke and bolted for the rear at the sight of advancing Federals. The men of the embattled and bloodied 5th Texas watched this flight in amazement and mounting fury. One disgusted captain in the regiment commanded his men to fire on the fleeing Confederates before quickly countermanding himself.⁶⁵

Jackson’s and Hood’s forces were now dangerously exposed. Near the Dunkard Church, Brig. Gen. George S. Greene’s Second Division of Mansfield’s corps still held ground, needing only some support to renew its attack on the thin Confederate line. At this juncture a thin line of blue emerged from the East Woods, a half mile away, Sumner’s II Corps, forming for the Federal’s third attack of the day. In air reeking “of sulfer and blood,” Jackson quickly pulled together reinforcements from the other parts of the battlefield, as well as a portion of Maj. Gen. McLaw’s men, who had just arrived from Harpers Ferry. These reinforcements moved into the West Woods without a pause. Lee pulled Col. James Walker’s two brigades to move north of the Lower Bridge, and they, too, moved into the West Woods. Once positioned, 10,000 Confederates formed a semicircle whose outer points encompassed the 5,000 men in Sumner’s approaching force.66

Hood later reported that Longstreet had repeatedly denied his requests for reinforcements to assist in holding his position. He firmly believed “that had General McLaws arrived by 8:30 a.m. our victory on the left would have been as thorough, quick, and complete as upon the plains of Manassas.” Similarly, Col. Wofford, in command of the brigade on September 17, wrote that it “deserved a better fate than to have been as they were, sacrificed for the want of better support.”⁶⁷

Sumner had entered the battle with two divisions. However, he was unaware that Brig. Gen. William French’s division had drifted south and lost contact with Maj. Gen. John S. Sedgwick’s division. Sumner believed one bold thrust would beat the exhausted Confederates and turn the tide of battle. In his eagerness, however, he had neglected to ensure that French would follow closely in his rear. Sumner started down the Hagerstown Pike at 9:00 a.m. with Sedgwick’s division, crossed the Pike, and penetrated the West Woods unmolested.⁶⁸

Suddenly a pocket of encircling fire and converging volleys virtually decimated Sedgwick’s men. The appalling slaughter mowed down nearly half of them within 20 minutes. “Go back, young man,” Sedgwick cried to a courier from the army commander, “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.” Many Federals escaped to the northeast under cover of Sedgwick’s artillery. Sensing an opportunity, Jackson swept across the open fields and charged the Federal batteries in front of the East Woods. But crossfire grape and canister from 50 guns staggered the Confederates, and they finally fell back to into the West Woods.⁶⁹

While the 1st Texas, beset on three sides, was disintegrating in the cornfield, determined Union resistance finally halted Hood’s unsupported counterattack elsewhere as well. In the East Woods, Turner’s 5th Texas finally had halted, out of ammunition, while on the Hagerstown Pike, blasts of double canister from the remnant of Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, checked the attack there. D. H. Hill’s three brigades had provided some relief when Hood’s men stumbled out of the corn. However, the XII Corps had pressed hard on the Rebels’ left flank, and Hood’s men lacked either energy or ammunition, or both, to resist. At 9:00 a.m. Hood finally called for a withdrawal to the West Woods. The three regiments that had stubbornly held on for so long finally pulled back, with 12 Federal regiments converging upon them. The 6th North Carolina of Law’s brigade on the left fell back first under fire from the cornfield; the 21st Georgia and 5th Texas retired under the creeping advance of the 111th and 125th Pennsylvania, the 3rd Maryland, and the 102nd New York of Greene’s 2nd brigade. As the Rebels withdrew toward Mumma’s farm, the Federals pushed steadily into the East Woods. The 6th North Carolina rear guard could still be distinguished, using trees and woodpiles for cover as they hastily continued to get their shots off. The remnants of Hood’s Division regrouped around the Dunkard Church while Pogue’s Battery relocated above the Smoketown Road/Hagerstown Pike intersection and began blasting the cornfield with spherical shells.70

After the 5th Texas finally withdrew, Pvt. Hinson and Parker “were very nearly surrounded.” “They are all gone,” Parker called to Hinson. What should they do? “[R]un,” Hinson replied, “and we ran nearly half a mile across an open field to our regiment which we found in a grove of timber and neither of us was hurt. The boys all gave us a hearty cheer and Capt. Turner complimented us very highly on our escape.” The brigade remained here, to the left and rear of the Dunkard Church “with empty cartridge boxes, holding aloft their colors,” until relieved about 10:00 a.m. by Lafayette McLaws’s division, which was moving “forward engaging the enemy.” Hood withdrew his troops to the previous night’s campsite, where the regiment replenished ammunition and reformed its ranks.⁷¹

While falling back with the 5th Texas to the West Woods Pvt. Nicholas Pomeroy of Company A heard the entreaties of Lt. T. B. Boyd, who was lying on the field with bullet wounds to both legs. Afraid Boyd would be killed by the hail of Federal artillery then focused on that portion of the field, Pomeroy courageously went back to the cornfield for the officer. He lifted the lieutenant onto his back and carried him safely through the heavy fire, dodging shell holes and artillery fire all the way to the West Woods. Unfortunately his brave act went for naught: Boyd died a few days later, after having one of his legs amputated.72

Yankees captured Lt. William E. Barry of the 4th Texas on the Hagerstown Pike when the Texas Brigade fell back to the West Woods. Subsequently watching the fighting from a ridge along the Poffenberger Lane as a “guest” of the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Barry saw four fresh regiments converging on Rebels in the East Woods to his immediate left rear. It seemed as if the whole Confederate line had disintegrated. One of the Federal cavalry officers directed Barry’s attention to a party of Yankees jubilantly heading up the lane toward them carrying a souvenir. Coming over to them, one of the soldiers exhibited their prize, a Confederate flag. He had not captured it, rather, he found it in the cornfield. Could Barry identify it? With his eyes welling with tears, Barry reached out for the tattered banner and stated, “I know it well. It is the flag of the First Texas regiment.” He kissed the blood-stained and tattered flag reverently, returned it to the soldier, and haltingly asked where it was found. It lay within a hand’s grasp of a cluster of 13 dead Rebels, came the soldier’s reply, and he had to roll a dead Confederate officer off the flag to pick it up. After hearing more, Barry knew the dead officer to be Lt. R. H. Gaston of H Company, 1st Texas, the brother of his dear friend.⁷³

The regiment saw no more significant battle action for the rest of the day, although it maintained its position in line of battle with the rest of the brigade. Just after noon, Lee ordered Hood back to the wooded area around the Dunkard Church “to hold” that position against any additional Federal attack on his left. The brigade braced for yet another Yankee advance, but it did not come. Chaplain Davis offered an analysis. The Yankees, he said: “had received a shock, so severe, and lost so many officers and men, that they were not willing to hazard another attempt.—And they felt so proud that they had not been run entirely off the field as usual, they were perfectly willing to make the child’s bargain with us—‘I’ll let you alone, if you’ll let me alone.’”

Hood then went about the task of gathering in the army’s stragglers, and in a span of less than three hours, the division collected approximately 5,000 of them. The intermingled mob was then parceled into makeshift companies and regiments where no enlisted men knew his officer or his file closer, or in many cases, even the man next to him.74

At approximately 4:00 p.m. this makeshift unit received orders to “fall in” and advance by column of four by the right flank, moving to the center of the Confederate line just north of Sharpsburg. As the head of the column approached an apple tree along its route of march, it came upon General Lee, standing there, hat in hand, with one arm still bandaged from a fall at Second Manassas. “Men,” the general called out, “I want you to go back on the line, and show that the stragglers of the Army of Northern Virginia, are better than the best troops of the enemy.” The effect was electrifying. As dusk fell, the men fell out and returned to their commands until only the men belonging to Hood’s division remained. The Texans stayed in this vicinity the night of the 17th and well into the morning of September 18.⁷⁵

By then, about three-fourths of Lee’s army had consolidated at Sharpsburg. Federal attacks had pushed the northeast salient of the Confederate left and center inward toward the Dunkard Church. These two sectors now merged into one continuous line running roughly southeast from Nicodemus Hill, past the Dunkard Church, and ending along a deeply cut farm road known as the Sunken Road. What was once the right, or south end of the Confederate line, was now the rear. The main line faced northeast toward the East Woods, while a guard force faced southeast toward the Lower Bridge. Only a thin line of infantry occupied the intervening terrain. Decisive, simultaneous Federal blows along all these positions would most likely have destroyed Lee’s defensive position altogether. However, content to wage a piecemeal battle, McClellan allowed Lee to shuttle brigades back and forth to counter each isolated thrust.⁷⁶

French’s Division of the II Corps had veered to the south from the Mumma farm and continued to advance around 10:30 a.m. They soon engaged the Confederate infantry at the Roulette Farm and in a ravine inclining southward to a ridge. On the crest of this ridge, a strong Confederate force awaited the Federals in the Sunken Road, and after the battle, “Bloody Lane.” This natural trench joined the Hagerstown Pike some 500 yards south of the Dunkard Church. The road ran east for about 1,000 yards, and then turned south toward the Boonsboro Pike. Five full brigades of D. H. Hill’s division were positioned in that road. During the day, Hill’s men were aligned northward. Three of these brigades had previously been drawn into the fight around the Dunkard Church, but they were subsequently pushed back to the Sunken Road where Hill had rallied them. As French’s division appeared, heading up the ravine toward the Sunken Road. Hill’s men, hidden in the embankment, delivered a galling fire into the advancing Union ranks. The Federals fell back in confusion, and then charged a second time. For three more hours, the two forces furiously clashed back and forth, without either side giving way.77

Isolated, French could not maintain a hold on this ridge, and his men finally faltered. However, his reserve brigade eventually came up and restored order to the relatively disorganized ranks. At this point, Maj. Gen. Israel Richardson’s division (Sumner’s corps) arrived on French’s left, ready to strike Hill’s right flank in the embankment. As French’s attack ebbed, Richardson’s men swept forward, passing to the east of the Roulette farmhouse and charging the Confederates at the crest of the ridge. As the fight intensified, Maj. Gen. R. H. Anderson’s brigade arrived in the rear of Hill’s on the road. However, Anderson soon fell wounded, and the counteroffensive dissipated. Then, pursuant to a mistaken order, Brig. Gen. Robert E. Rodes’s men in the Sunken Road suddenly began to withdraw towards Sharpsburg, thus opening a significant gap in the Confederate front and a potential window to the destruction of Lee’s army.⁷⁸

This fight for the middle of the Confederate line had thoroughly exhausted both sides, and by around 1:00 p.m., it was all over. The Confederate line in the area had become extremely vulnerable to a renewed Federal assault. So weak was the Confederate line here that Longstreet himself held the horses of his staff while they manned two cannon supporting Hill’s thin line. McClellan’s caution, however, prevented a breakthrough—although Franklin’s VI Corps had formed to attack, McClellan would not allow it. Rather, he stressed defensive measures, keeping Franklin’s corps in reserve to support the Federal right. Lee, on the other hand, contemplated a complete envelopment of the Federal flank at the North and East Woods. But a closer inspection of the Federal artillery on Poffenberger Ridge revealed that the massive Federal guns would shatter any Confederate attack, and Lee had to abandon his hopes for a counterstroke.79

In the interim, Burnside’s IX Corps was gearing up for an attack on the Lower Bridge. The topography there favored the few hundred Georgians under Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs then defending the bridge. In the last few hundred yards before reaching the bridge, the road plunged into a funnel-like depression between opposing bluffs of Antietam Creek. Toombs’s men manned rifle pits on the west bluff overlooking the approach road and the bridge. Burnside, a victim of faulty reconnaissance, did not know of the nearby fords where he could have easily crossed the creek. Instead, he planned to storm the bridge, essentially forcing his troops into this topographical funnel. His first attack began about 9:00 a.m. and was followed by several successive charges, all of them shattered by deadly fire from the Georgians. After three hours, as the fighting reached a crescendo at the Sunken Road, Burnside had as yet failed to break through this bottleneck.⁸⁰

Brig. Gen. Isaac Peace Rodman’s Union division moving downstream in search of a crossing finally locating one nearly a mile south of the bridge at a place called Snavely’s Ford. By late morning, Rodman had crossed the creek and was driving against Robert Toombs’ right flank, which was guarding the bridge. About the same time, Col. George Crook’s Union scouts found yet another ford above the bridge and sent a brigade across. At 1:00 p.m., two regiments, the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania, marched quickly out of the cover of the wooded hills and charged the stone bridge. They crossed over it before Confederate artillery could stop them, and before too long a wide gap yawned in the Confederate defenses while Rodman and Crook hammered the Confederate flanks. Although now over the bridge and safely on the west bank, General Burnside halted to reorganize his command, a task that consumed close to two precious hours. It was about 3:00 p.m. before Burnside was prepared to advance once more. Moving up the hill toward Sharpsburg, he struck Brig. Gen. D. R. Jones’s four brigades on the hills southeast of the town and pushed them back into the town itself. To counter this deadly threat, Lee shifted all available artillery southward. Nonetheless, after an hour, the Federals were approaching the town itself. Only a half mile separated them and Lee’s line of retreat to the Potomac—spelling disaster for the badly decimated Confederate army.⁸¹

Then, suddenly, salvation appeared for the beleaguered Army of Northern Virginia. Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill’s Light Division, rushing across the Potomac three miles away, drove frantically toward the Federals advancing on Sharpsburg. Part of Hill’s artillery had already arrived with news that all Hill’s brigades were close behind—Hill had left Harpers Ferry early upon Lee’s urgent order and covered 17 miles in a mere seven hours. The head of Hill’s column soon appeared on the road to the south, and his five brigades rushed toward the Federal flank. This unexpected and fierce attack startled Burnside’s troops. While still with superior numbers and greater artillery support, Burnside yet again called for a halt. Within an hour and a half after A. P. Hill’s arrival, the battle had ended. That night, the exhausted men on both sides lay in line upon their weapons on the battlefield. “Neither side would admit defeat; [while] neither could claim victory.”82

From sunup to dusk, Lee had thrown every organized unit within his army into the battle. Accounting for straggling on the long march before the battle, Lee fielded approximately 41,000 men at Sharpsburg. McClellan’s army of upwards of 87,000 delivered five sustained attacks, including three in the West Woods and the Cornfield, as well as those at the Sunken Road and the Lower Bridge. And Lee’s men withstood them all.⁸³

The battle thus ultimately ended in a draw, although the North could creditably claim victory, having arrested Lee’s invasion of the North. Casualties were so devastating that the battle is considered to be the bloodiest day of the Civil War. McClellan lost a total of 26,023 in the campaign, 12,410 at Sharpsburg and another 12,000 captured at Harpers Ferry. Of Lee’s 13,385 casualties in the entire campaign, over 10,700 fell at Sharpsburg alone. Federal Bvt. Brig. Gen. Ezra A. Carman later described the desperate combat on that bloody field, where the toughest fighting was in the vicinity of the Texas Brigade’s position:

Here within twelve hundred yards of the Dunkard church 56,000 infantry (Federal and Confederate) were engaged, with a loss of 2,854 killed and 13,661 wounded—an aggregate of 16,575, or nearly thirty per cent of the number engaged. All this loss occurred before 1 P. M., more than three-fourths of it in a little over four hours on a field not over fifteen hundred yards from north to south, with an average width, east to west, of nine hundred yards—an area of about three hundred acres. No other equal area on the American continent has been so drenched in human blood.84

The road to the Dunkard Church, according to a Northern reporter, immediately following the battle:

[w]as so encumbered with their dead bodies as to be impassible, and it seemed in some places as if they had been heaped up with fence-rails and other material to form a defense against our musketry. They were elsewhere carded up in heaps of twenty or thirty, while the standing corn in the field to the right seemed to be also full of them. The open ground from this road to the wood … was covered by the dead lying as they fell, as it might be described without exaggeration, by brigades and divisions in line of battle.⁸⁵

Hood’s division was in shambles, and his old brigade itself terribly decimated. The Texas Brigade had entered the battle with 854 men and lost 560 in one day—almost all within a three-hour period—a 64 percent casualty rate, the third highest for a brigade in a single battle! The smallest toll for any of the brigade’s regiments was 50 percent. The butcher’s bill deeply affected Hood, and he reportedly shed tears as the reports came to him. That night, at a conference of war, General Lee, detecting Hood’s dispair, inquired about his division. “They are lying on the field where you sent them, sir,” Hood sadly replied, “but few have straggled. My division has been almost wiped out.”⁸⁶

The numbers of the 1st Texas fallen were the most staggering of all. Nicknamed the “Ragged First”—threadbare, indifferent to drilling, and undisciplined—this brave regiment went into the Cornfield with 226 men, and retired three hours later with 40 men. Most of these men went down in a 45-minute fire fight among those demolished stalks. This casualty rate, 82.3 percent, became the greatest of any regiment of either army during the entire war. Of the 16 flag-bearers the brigade lost at Sharpsburg that day, the 1st Texas alone lost nine. While losing comparatively fewer, the 5th Texas, after having lost all of its field grade officers at Second Manassas, was led into battle by its ranking captain, Ike Turner. Leading approximately 175 men into the fight, Turner lost 86 in the bloody action, including five killed and 81 wounded, three of them mortally. Four of those killed outright came from Company B, which went into the fight with but 10 effectives including Pvt. Hicks Baker, who carried the regimental flag. Two others were wounded in the fighting, and another was missing and presumed killed. The courage and determination of the Texans at Sharpsburg captured the attention of the Northern press. An eyewitness account in the New York Herald reported: “It is beyond all wonder, how men, such as these rebel troops are—can fight as they do. That those ragged and filthy wretches, sick, hungry, and, in all ways miserable, should prove such heroes in the fight, is past explanation. Men never fought better.”87

The men of the regiment had been indelibly stamped with a permanent impression of the vicious battle. Rufus Felder wrote home about the litany of friends and neighbors killed or wounded, especially the deaths of Jim and Julian Hutchinson at Sharpsburg: “What a shock it will be to the family, two sons in one fight.” His bitterness was palable: “You said in your last letter that you hoped the Texans thirst for Yankee blood had been partly quenched. I can speak for the three reg. in Va. Their thirst has not only been partially quenched, they have been in so many fights and have suffered so much they would be willing never to go in another fight.”⁸⁸

John Stevens related that following the loss of two-thirds of his unit at Second Manassas, and then a similar proportion at Sharpsburg, his company was left with “but a very insignificant number.” His captain and the rest of his company, he said, “could eat out of one skillet—just five men! … O, what sad letters we have to write home to the bereaved loved ones in Texas,” he lamented. James Roberdeau later wrote of the fight, “[s]peaking of the duration of time we were engaged, a comrade of the 4th unites with me in saying, ‘It was the longest day ever made!’… Conditions considered, stamp it not only the bloodiest, but place it in the fore front, in every particular, of conspicuous battles in modern history.”⁸⁹

Many of the senior commanders were quite bitter about the lack of support afforded the brigade that day. Hood, who had repeatedly sought reinforcements from both Jackson and D. H. Hill, believed “our victory on the left would have been as thorough, quick and complete as upon the plains of Manassas” had McLaws arrived 90 minutes earlier. Recounting his division’s actions that fateful day, “tears … coursed down his cheeks, and the sobs that choked his utterance, when he saw his brave men falling fast before the merciless fire of the outnumbering enemy, and his every appeal for aid to them was met by the statement that there were no troops to send to their relief until McLaws should arrive[.]”90

Colonel William T. Wofford, commanding the brigade that day, stated that it “deserved a better fate than to have been as they were, sacrificed for the want of better support.” Captain Ike Turner, the 5th Texas commander, agreed, echoing the lack of support, and the fact that the troops to his left had all fallen back, requiring him to relinquish his forward position in the East Woods. One of the Texan’s rank and file later proclaimed:

[i]f reinforcements had reached the firing line before the Texas Brigade and Law’s Brigade were forced to abandon their advanced positions, the Federals would have been swept from the field and another triumph would have been added to the list of Confederate victories. Our dead lay in rows upon the ground, where they had fought a fruitless fight; and instead of a Confederate victory, it was an indecisive contest, giving hope and courage to the Federals and depressing in its effect upon the Confederates.⁹¹

Both armies spent the 18th of September resting, reorganizing, and adjusting their lines. Lee could not have withdrawn his army in the face of the enemy by daylight on the 18th, and thus had little choice but to remain in his exposed position, evacuate his wounded, and prepare for an evening retreat. While the Confederates maintained possession of a large portion of the battlefield, Lee had by this time ascertained that his battered army, given its battle losses and impoverished supply situation, could not withstand another Federal assault. The army had exhausted its limited manpower, run dangerously low on ammunition and supplies, and had no chance of being reinforced. Lee also worried about being backed up to the Potomac, a significant natural obstacle with few decent fords within ready reach. Meanwhile, McClellan, while suffering greater losses, had almost 25,000 troops in reserve who had not been committed the previous day. Despite his advantage, McClellan, still under the impression that he was heavily outnumbered, made a fateful decision not attack Lee on September 18.92

This day was otherwise spent burying the dead, tending to the wounded, and rounding up stragglers. Felder wrote home that “[b]oth sides were too exhausted to renew the fight next day & a flag of truce was agreed to bury the dead. This occupied all day & that night our forces fell back across the river.” The regiment, with the rest of the Texas troops, was ordered to prepare to move out toward Virginia after dark on the 18th, and “with the barefooted and bedraggled Texans again bringing up the rear,” the army crossed to the south bank of the Potomac at Boteler’s Ford near Shepherdstown. On the return trip, fewer bands played, and those which did played “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny” hoping to bolster the men’s spirits.⁹³

Along the way, it seemed like every building had been converted into a field hospital, where overworked army surgeons labored tirelessly to treat the Southern wounded. This mass of wounded and dying culminated at Shepherdstown, where “[t]he wounded continued to arrive until the town was quite unable to hold all the disabled and suffering. They filled every building and overflowed into the country round, into farm-houses, barns, corn-cribs, cabins,—wherever four walls and a roof were found together.”⁹⁴

The regiment waded across the waist-deep Potomac River back to Virginia in the early hours of September 19, well covered by artillery in position on the Virginia bluffs overlooking the river. While the 5th Texas crossed, Frank W. Smith of Company E was standing on the bank when a feeble, wounded soldier asked for a ride on one of Hood’s wagons. Told that this was against the rules, he displayed his wound and produced the bullet cut from his body near the spine. “I do not want to be captured, and if I ford the river the water will get in my wound and kill me.” A wagon finally took him across. Later that same evening, Smith was picking up flour at a mill when the miller inquired as to his unit and learned that a member of the 5th Texas lay dying at the miller’s house. Smith ran to the house and found that particular comrade close to death. “When I went into his room he was lying in the arms of the dear old mother of the family. He at once recognized me and introduced me to the family, and said ‘They tell me I am about to die.’ I was so surprised to witness such devotion to him, a stranger, that I could hardly answer him. This dear old mother and her daughter were weeping as if he were a son and brother. It was one of the saddest incidents of my life.” The young man was dead within the hour. Years after the war, Smith wrote in a publication, “[s]hould this [his account] meet the eyes of the members of his old company from Independence, Tex., it will be a source of pleasure to them to know he was kindly cared for and had a suitable burial.”95

The same day, the regiment marched to a campsite on the Opequon Creek near Martinsburg. Late that night, troops from Fitz John Porter’s V Corps pushed across the Potomac at Boteler’s Ford and attacked the Confederate artillery and the rear guard still stationed on the Virginia bluffs, capturing several guns. Early on September 20th, Porter moved elements of two divisions across the river to create a bridgehead. Chief of artillery Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton alerted General Lee, who dispatched A. P. Hill’s division back five miles towards Shepherdstown. Hill counterattacked under a fierce Union artillery fire from the Maryland hills; Porter, sensing that his force was outnumbered, promptly ordered a withdrawal.⁹⁶

Among the Union regiments having difficulty getting back to the north bank of the Potomac was the 118th Pennsylvania, which had never seen combat. Many of its men could not escape and drowned in the river. The combined casualties of the fighting amounted to 677 men, including 269 of the 118th Pennsylvania. Felder, in his letter home on October 1, 1862, wrote, “Next morning the Yankees thinking we were retreating crossed over a bridge which was immediately attacked & the whole except about a hundred was killed & taken.”⁹⁷

Three days after the battle, the Texas Brigade was confronted by soldiers of the 6th North Carolina. The Texans greeted their compatriots with “Halloa, fellers! Have you a good suppy of tar on your heels this morning?” The Carolinians responded ‘“Yes,’ and it’s a real pity you’uns didn’t come over and borrow a little the other day; it mout have saved that flag o’your’n.”⁹⁸

The regiment remained in camp north of Martinsburg until September 27, when it moved to Washington Springs, also known as Washington Run, near a cool, clear pool of spring water five miles northeast of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, where they recuperated, refitted, and reorganized throughout most of October. Lt. James E. Cobb of Company F wrote in his diary that the respite was most welcome after “much & fatiguing marching, & hard fighting.”99

There Stevens reunited with his comrades. After a hospital stay of several days at Warrenton, Stevens had insisted upon returning to the regiment. He had some adventures to relate when he did. With a companion, he set out to find his comrades first around Martinsburg, and then as his odyssey took him further, he lived off the land by foraging. At one isolated farm house, his clothes had fallen to pieces when he tried to wash them. Luckily, the kindly family gave him a new set of clothing.¹⁰⁰

While encamped near Martinsburg, Lee wrote a letter to Lewis T. Wigfall, Texas senator and former commander of the Texas Brigade: “General,” he said,

I have not yet heard from you with regard to the new Texas regiments which you promised to raise for the Army. I need them much. I rely upon those we have in all tight places, and fear I have to call upon them too often. They have fought grandly and nobly, and we must have more of them. Please make every exertion to get them in, and send them on to me. You must help us in this matter. With a few more such regiments as Hood now has, as an example of daring and bravery, I could feel much more confident of the campaign.¹⁰¹

This was a fulsome compliment to the common Texas soldier, not only those in Virginia, but also other parts of the Confederacy. The Texans embellished their hard-earned reputation at Sharpsburg, but at tremendous cost. Mrs. A. V. Winkler wrote after the war that during that battle, “a small handful of men withstood ten times their number, unsupported by the re-enforcements that did not arrive until it seemed human nature could no longer endure the strain upon brain and nerve. The Texans there made a record second only to those who fell martyrs of the Alamo.” Unfortunately, Lee’s fervent wish to replenish his ranks with more of the same would never be realized.¹⁰²

Major General Hood, addressing the division on September 28, at Winchester, tendered his thanks and congratulations to the men for their arduous and gallant conduct during the campaign.

In less than three months you have marched several hundred miles, under trying circumstances, participated in several battles, and made yourselves the acknowledged heroes of three of the hardest fought battles that have occurred in the present war. In none of these have you elicited so much praise from our commanding general, or so justly entitled yourselves to the proud distinction of being the best soldiers in the army, as at the battle of Sharpsburg. Called upon to retake ground lost by our arms, you not only did so, but promptly drove the enemy, twenty times your number, from his guns, and if supported would have led on to one of the most signal victories known to the history of any people. Your failure to do so was attributable to others. And it was here, by your conduct in rallying and presenting front to the advancing columns of the enemy, that you earned higher praise than in any of the brilliant charges you have made.103

Over 90 days, the Texans had fought three major and four minor engagements, marched over 500 miles, and sustained over 1,800 casualties. During this time, the 5th Texas took over 440 casualties, including at least 36 killed in battle. From a manpower standpoint, the regiment, as well as the brigade, would never recover from the bloodletting of these past few months. Nonetheless, it would continue to fight on as if it had.¹⁰⁴

 

1 National Park Service Historical Handbook, Antietam: National Battlefield Site—Maryland (Washington, DC, 1961), 4-5; James M. McPherson, Antietam: The Battle That Changed the Course of the War (New York, NY, 2002), 88-89.

2 National Park Service, Antietam, 4-5.

3 James M. McPherson, Antietam, 88-90; Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York, NY, 1961), 292.

4 Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865 (New York, NY, 1989), 267-68; McPherson, Antietam, 86-87, 88.

5 National Park Service, Antietam, 5-6; Sears, Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 266-68, 270-71.

6 OR 12, pt. 2, 559-60, 647, 744, 796-77; Hennessy, Return to Bull Run, 448-51. Not a single Union general officer was killed at Second Manassas, but at Chantilly they lost both generals involved.

7 Watson D. Williams to Laura Williams, October 2, 1862, in CRC; Stevens, Reminiscences, 66; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 125.

8 Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124-25; McMurry, John Bell Hood, 56; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 38-39; Polley, Letters to Charming Nellie, 83; Stevens, Reminiscences, 69; Kristopher Teters, “‘Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,’ on America’s Bloodiest Day,” in Barbara M. Powell and Michael A. Powell, eds., Mid-Maryland History: Conflict, Growth and Change (Charleston, SC, 2008), 41.

9 Stevens, Reminiscences, 66. The crossing took place around the upstream tip of Harrison Island. Other 5th Texas accounts located the crossing at Edward’s Ferry or Point of Rocks. However, Hood reported it as White’s Ford. OR 19, pt. 2, 922.

10 Stevens, Reminiscences, 65-66.

11 Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 10, 1899; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 122-23; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 112; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 162.

12 Robert C. Henry, The Story of the Confederacy (New York, NY, 1936), 182; Rufus K. Felder to Catherine Felder, September 23, 1862, in CRC. It was here that a day earlier Jackson was allegedly confronted by Barbara Fritchie in Whittier’s famous poem. See George O. Seilheimer, “The Historical Basis of Whittier’s ‘Barbara Frietchie,’” in B&L, 2:618-19; O. T. Hanks, History of Captain B. F. Benton’s Company, Hood’s Texas Brigade (Austin, TX, 1964), 20.

13 McPherson, Antietam, 98-99.

14 Phillip Thomas Tucker, Burnside’s Bridge: The Climatic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia at Antietam Creek (Mechanicsburg, PA, 2000), 44; National Park Service, Antietam, 12; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:665-66; Henry Steele Commager, The Blue and the Gray: The Story of the Civil War as Told by Participants, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN, 1950), 1:204-05.

15 OR 19, pt. 1, 145, 839, 952; National Park Service, Antietam, 9-10; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:666-69; McPherson, Antietam, 106-107.

16 Tucker, Burnside’s Bridge, 44; McPherson, Antietam, 107; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:667-68.

17 OR 19, pt. 1, 922; Chicoine, Confederates of Chappel Hill, 55; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899 in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Stevens, Reminiscences, 66-67.

18 Silas Colgrove, “The Finding of Lee’s Order,” in B&L, 2:603; National Park Service, Antietam, 7-10; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1: 671.

19 Daniel H. Hill, “The Battle of South Mountain, or Boonsboro,” in B&L, 2:559-60; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:673-76; McPherson, Antietam, 109; OR 19, pt. 1, 140.

20 Hill, “The Battle of South Mountain,” in B&L, 2:559-60; McPherson, Antietam, 111-12.

21 Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 113-14; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 3 vols. (New York, NY, 1944), 2:173; Jacob D. Cox, “Forcing Fox’s Gap and Turner’s Gap,” and William B. Franklin, “Notes on Crampton’s Gap and Antietam,” in B&L, 2: 584-86, 592-93.

22 Stevens, Reminiscences, 69; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 114; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1: 676-77; OR 19, pt. 1, 922; D. H. Hill, “The Battle of South Mountain, or Boonsboro,” B&L, 2: 559-70; Polley, Letters to Charming Nellie, 83-84; Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” 44; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899. While General Hood’s release was considered “temporary, nothing further was said about it after the battle.” Soon thereafter, Hood was promoted to major general for his inspired battlefield leadership and his division essentially doubled in size.

23 Robertson, Touched With Valor, 12; OR 19, pt. 1, 805; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 123.

24 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 41; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 114-16; OR 19, pt.1, 805, 922, 1023; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 123.

25 Stevens, Reminiscences, 70-71; McPherson, Antietam, 111, Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124; “List of Casualties in the Fifth Texas Regiment,” in Chilton, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 63, 69, 74.

26 Hill, “Battle of South Mountain,” in B&L 2:575, 579-81; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:677-78; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 185-87; McPherson, Antietam, 112-13.

27 James Longstreet, “The Invasion of Maryland,” in B&L 2:665; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 179, 190-91; McPherson, Antietam, 113.

28 OR 19, pt. 1, 839, 922-23, 927; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 167-68; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Nabours, “Active Service of a Texas Command,” CV, 24:69-70; Leon County Historical Book Survey, History of Leon County, Texas, 19; Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 1:13. T. T. DeGraffenried of Company B and Pvt. John T. Allison of Company C, having been wounded at Boonsboro, were among these disabled men, as was Lt. Edward Collier of Company B, who, unfortunately, was taken ill and sent to a private home, where he was subsequently captured. For more on Nabours, Collier, and Graffenried, see Appendix B.

29 Simpson, Gaines’ Mill to Appomattox, 102-04; OR 19, pt. 1, 805, 922; Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” in Powell and Powell, Mid-Maryland History, 44; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 101-102, 166-67; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Nabours, “Active Service of a Texas Command,” in CV, 24:69-70; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 115.

30 Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:682; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 105.

31 OR 19, pt. 1, 922-23; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124-25; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 115. Many participants in the battle referred to the plain, white block building as St. Mumma, apparently because S. Mumma, a local landowner, had donated the land for the church.

32 OR 19, pt. 1, 927; Longstreet, “Invasion of Maryland,” in B&L, 2:667; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 115-16.

33 Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 115-16.

34 Douglas, “Stonewall Jackson In Maryland,” and Jacob D. Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:635-37; McMurry, John Bell Hood, 57; National Park Service, Antietam, 15-18.

35 OR 19, pt. 1, 268-69, 923; Simpson, Gaines’ Mill to Appomattox, 104; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 169; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 42.

36 Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2: 635; McPherson, Antietam, 116-17.

37 Stevens, Reminiscences, 72-73; OR 19, pt. 1, 936; Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2: 635-36.

38 John M. Priest, Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle (New York, NY, 1993), 15-18; OR 19, pt.1, 267-69, 937, 927; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 42; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 105; Longstreet, “The Invasion of Maryland,” in B&L, 2:667.

39 Stevens, Reminiscences, 72-73; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 118; McPherson, Antietam, 117; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 105-106; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124.

40 OR 19, pt. 1, 923, 936; Evans, Confederate Military History, 214; Simpson, Gaines’ Mill to Appomattox, 105-06; Priest, Antietam, 15-20.

41 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 42; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:687-88; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 106; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 116; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 126. The men had received three days’ rations on the 13th, Hood said, which included only one-half ration of meat for one day, and green corn. OR 19, pt. 1, 923.

42 Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 124; W. R. Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 42.

43 Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:688-90; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 126; McPherson, Antietam, 118-19; Stevens, Reminiscences, 74; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 106.

44 Priest, Antietam, 31-35, 38-42; McPherson, Antietam, 117-19.

45 William A. Frassanito, Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day (New York, NY, 1978), 41-42; Priest, Antietam, 37-44.

46 Stevens, Reminiscences, 74; OR 19, pt. 1, 143, 923; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 2:687; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 170-71; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 105-106.

47 Priest, Antietam, 37-38, 41-48; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:688; Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:635.

48 OR 19, pt. 1, 927-28, 934; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 2:690 McPherson, Antietam, 118; Priest, Antietam, 51, 54-55.

49 Priest, Antietam, 55; Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” in Powell and Powell, Mid-Maryland History, 47.

50 Henry Kyd Douglas, “Stonewall Jackson In Maryland,” in B&L, 2:627; Stevens, Reminiscences, 74-75; Priest, Antietam, 54-57.

51 OR 19, pt. 1, 934; A Member of the 4th Texas, “The Texans at Sharpsburg,” CV (1914), 22:555; Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 127.

52 Everett, Chaplain Davis, 126-27; Priest, Antietam, 55, 59-60.

53 Elliott S. Welch to Parents, September 22, 1862, in Elliott Stephen Welch Papers, 1862-1865, Duke University Library, Durham, NC, hereinafter DUL; Priest, Antietam, 59-60; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 124.

54 Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19-20; Elliott S. Welch to Parents, September 22, 1862, in Elliott Stephen Welch Papers, DUL; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 131.

55 OR 19, pt. 1, 923; Priest, Antietam, 60-62; Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19; John G. Walker, “Sharpsburg,” in B&L, 2: 677-79; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 116, 118-19, 131-32; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 126-28; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 107-108.

56 Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19-20; OR 19, pt. 1, 923; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 125-26; Priest, Antietam, 61-62.

57 Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (New York, NY, 2003), 201; OR 19, pt. 1, 932-33; Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” in Powell and Powell, Mid-Maryland History, 48.

58 OR 19, pt. 1, 932-33; Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” in Powell and Powell, Mid-Maryland History, 48; Val C. Giles, “The Flag of First Texas, A. N. Virginia,” CV (1907) 15:417; Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 201. The 1st Texas was so proud of its flag “that they carried it in a silk oilcloth case, and never unfurled it except on reviews, dress parades or in battle.” It was a reminder of home, almost 2000 miles away. The flag had been presented to the regiment by Miss Lula Wigfall while her father, Louis T. Wigfall, was the commander of the regiment in 1861. It and one other were the only Texas flags lost, captured or surrendered by Texans in the war. Giles, “The Flag of First Texas,” CV, 15:417.

59 Henderson, “General Hood’s Brigade,” SHSP, 29:196-98; Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19; OR 19, pt. 1, 936; Priest, Antietam, 65-66.

60 “The Texans at Sharpsburg,” CV, (1914) 22:555-56; Priest, Antietam, 71-72.

61 Priest, Antietam, 72-74; OR 19, pt. 1, 936.

62 OR 19, pt. 1, 927-28, 923; James C. Nisbet, Four Years on the Firing Line (Chattanooga, TN, 1914), 154-55; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:690-91; Priest, Antietam, 72-74.

63 OR 19, pt. 1, 936; Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 1:337. For more on Hinson, see Appendix B.

64 Priest, Antietam, 80-83; Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 208-211. Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:19; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 127-28.

65 Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 208-09; Priest, Antietam, 83, 90.

66 Priest, Antietam, 83; John G. Walker, “Sharpsburg,” in B&L, 2:628.

67 Priest, Antietam, 83; OR 19, pt. 1, 923, 929; Walker, “Sharpsburg,” in B&L, 2:678.

68 Walker, “Sharpsburg,” in B&L, 2:678; OR 19, pt. 1, 923.

69 Foote, Civil War Narrative, 2:695; Priest, Antietam, 90-91; Cox, “The Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:644-45.

70 Priest, Antietam, 90-91; OR 19, pt. 1, 936; Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade At Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:20.

71 Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 1:337; OR 19, pt. 1, 923, 928; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 44; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 175; Frassanito, Antietam, 44; “Texans At Sharpsburg,” in CV, 22:555; Priest, Antietam, 90; Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 208-11. Following the war, McLaws and Hood engaged in a battle of words over whether McLaws arrived late from Harpers Ferry at 10:00 a.m. as a result of having stopped at a river to bathe. McLaws insisted he arrived before daylight and was on the field before 7:00 a.m. Chaplain Davis backed up Hood’s assertion about McLaws’s arrival time, because of his routine “slowness” in the face of danger. McLaws insisted that he was posted to the right, supporting Walker’s Brigade, and further that Lee told him to halt the division near his headquarters and rest the men, and that he would be called upon when necessary. At about 8:30 a.m., according to his account, McLaws was told his division was needed, and he then went to seek out General Lee. LaFayette McLaws, A Soldier’s General: the Civil War Letters of Major General Lafayette McLaws (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 182. Hood asserted that victory would have been complete if McLaws had arrived “even as late as 9 o’clock.” “This is not the first time that a single man had thwarted the plans of a great army,” Chaplain Davis later stated, “and made its victory only half complete.” Everett, Chaplain Davis, 130.

72 Pomeroy, “War Memoirs,” 41-42; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 180.

73 Priest, Antietam, 88-89; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 128-29.

74 Everett, Chaplain Davis, 128; OR 19, pt. I, 923.

75 J. S. Johnston, “Reminiscences of Sharpsburg, SHSP (1880), 8:527-28; Hood & Wofford to Sorrell, September 27, 29, 1862, in OR 19, pt. 1, 923, 928; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 128; Gerard Mayers, “The First Maryland Campaign and Hood’s Texans,” accessed March 2, 2009, http://www.civilwarhome.com/texansatantietam.htm.

76 Priest, Antietam, 30-34.

77 Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:644-47; Priest, Antietam, 139-46.

78 Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2: 644-47; Priest, Antietam, 134-39; 189-90; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1: 694-95.

79 Cox, “Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:649; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:696-97.

80 Tucker, Burnside’s Bridge, 86-87.

81 Cox, “The Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:644-45; David L. Thompson, “With Burnside at Antietam,” in B&L, 2:650-54, 660-62; Tucker, Burnside’s Bridge, 77-78, 84, 92, 95-96, 118; Priest, Antietam, 218, 242.

82 Priest, Antietam, 40-45; Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:698.

83 William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861-1865: A Treatise on the Extent and Nature of the Mortuary Losses in the Union Regiments, With Full and Exhaustive Statistics Compiled From the Official Records on File in the State Military Bureaus and at Washington (Albany, NY, 1889), 558.

84 C. A. Richardson, “Account of the Sharpsburg Battle,” CV (1908) 16:20-21; D. H. Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War By a Virginian,” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (1868), 36:288.

85 Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War,” 288.

86 Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” in Mid-Maryland History, 49; OR 19, pt. 1, 929, 936-37; Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 558; Evans, Confederate Military History, 11:214-15; Longstreet, “Invasion of Maryland,” and Charles C. Coffin, “Antietam Scenes,” in B&L, 2:670, 685; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 133-34. The casualty rate for the famous Light Brigade in the Crimean War in its charge “into the valley of death” at Balaklava was under forty percent. Fox, Regimental Losses, 36.

87 Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Polley, Letters to Charming Nellie, 84-85; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 176-77; Fox, Regimental Losses In the American Civil War, 556; Everett, Chaplain Davis, 129; OR 19, pt. 1, 811, 936; Evans, Confederate Military History, 11:214-15; C. A. Richardson, “Account of the Sharpsburg Battle,” CV, 16:20-21.

88 Rufus K. Felder to Catherine Felder, October 1, 1862, in CRC.

89 Stevens, Reminiscences, 76-77; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899, in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Chicoine, Confederates of Chappell Hill, 56.

90 OR 19, pt. 1, 923; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 117; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 187.

91 OR 19, pt. 1, 929, 936, 929; Hamby, “Hood’s Texas Brigade at Sharpsburg,” CV, 16:20.

92 OR 19, pt. 1, 143, 151; Cox, “The Battle of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:603, 658; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 182. McClellan continued to cling to his estimates placing Lee’s army at 120,000 men, more than double its actual strength before the battle.

93 Rufus K. Felder to Catherine Felder, October 1, 1862 in CRC; Chicione, Confederates of Chappell Hill, 56; Diary of James E. Cobb, Co. F, 5th Texas 1862-1864, September 20, 1862, in Cobb-Hunter Family Papers, 1819-1904, in UNC; Roberdeau to Editor, September 17, 1899; in Colorado Citizen, October 5, 1899; Simpson, Gaines’ Mill to Appomattox, 108; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 122.

94 Mary Bedinger Mitchell, “A Woman’s Recollections of Antietam,” in B&L, 2:691.

95 “Heroes and Heroines In Virginia,” CV, 2:267.

96 Foote, Civil War Narrative, 1:702-703; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 183; Hamilton, History of Company M, 24. By coincidence, one of the Confederate brigades counterattacking that day was commanded by Brig. Gen. James J. Archer, formerly commander of the 5th Texas until June 1, 1862.

97 Rufus K. Felder to Catherine Felder, October 1, 1862 in CRC.

98 Strother, “Personal Recollections of the War by a Virginian,” CV, 24:287-89; Nabours, “Active Service of a Texas Command,” 69-70.

99 Cobb Diary, September 27, 1862, in UNC.

100 Stevens, Reminiscences, 84-86.

101, Rags and Hope, 134.

102 Teters, “Sons of Defenders of the Alamo,” 49-50; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 109.

103 Winkler, Confederate Capital, 111-12.

104 OR 19, pt. I, 937; Simpson, Lee’s Grenadier Guard, 183; Chilton, “List of Casualties in the Fifth Texas Regiment,” in Hood’s Texas Brigade, 69.