When Not Losing Is Victory
September 13, 1862: Battle of Antietam
William Terdoslavich
It was dumb luck at first touch.
The 27th Indiana Regiment was going into camp near Frederick, Maryland, on September 13, 1862, when Corporal Barton Mitchell discovered a bundled paper in a field. Surprise! It was wrapped around three cigars. Surely this was his lucky day.
Then he looked at the “wrapper”—dated September 9, 1862, Special Order 191, detailing the dispositions of the Army of Northern Virginia as it invaded Maryland. Quickly, the captured order went up the chain of command to Major General George McClellan, the reinstated commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac.
McClellan had spent the previous days advancing slowly out of Washington, again fearing that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was lurking somewhere out there with 120,000 men, ready to pounce. But McClellan’s fears vanished once he had Lee’s order in hand. Now he knew exactly where each of Lee’s detachments was located, and in what strength—a major advantage at a time when generals never had complete information of enemy whereabouts.
This spurred McClellan to get his forces moving—sixteen hours after he received “the Lost Order.” Word also got back to Lee via southern sympathizers about what McClellan knew. The dream of shifting the cost of war onto northern soil turned into a nightmare. Lee had already split his Army of Northern Virginia into five parts, all in different places, each vulnerable to defeat by any portion of McClellan’s larger army. Lee had broken the rules of war before and won. Now the calculated risk was turning into a rash gamble.
Those Who Dare Can Win
Knowing that defense alone never wins a war, Lee looked for ways to take the offensive. Invading Maryland might seem far-fetched, but Lee had a line of reasoning that took him there. Staying in Virginia would only continue the hardship of local farmers, already tapped out from supplying Lee’s hungry forces. In Maryland, Lee’s army could live off the bountiful land tilled by many southern sympathizers. Burning the bridge at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, would slash the only direct rail route linking the eastern United States with the Midwest. Lee would then be free to turn on Philadelphia, Baltimore, or even Washington, D.C.
Okay, some of these goals were the stuff of daydreams, but a Confederate win on Union turf might—just might—influence Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy and mediate an end to the war. Also mindful of the war’s political dimension, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was keeping a secret scrap of paper in his desk, waiting for a Union victory before making it public.
The Army of Northern Virginia was on a winning streak when Lee took it north of the Potomac on September 4. Lee knew from previous experience that McClellan was not a quick or decisive commander in the field, more likely than not to take counsel of his fears. Banking on that, Lee assigned two-thirds of his forces to Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, which would assault the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry from three directions. This move stopped the garrison of 11,500 Union troops from reinforcing McClellan. Harpers Ferry was also a major supply base, whose capture would be a huge prize for Lee’s poorly supplied force.
A fourth division would be posted around South Mountain to bag any retreating Union troops fleeing east. Major General James Longstreet would take his command north to Hagerstown, Pennsylvania, hopefully to block any mustering Pennsylvania militia. “The hallucination that McClellan was not capable of serious work seemed to pervade our army, even to this moment of dreadful threatening,” Longstreet would later recall.
Approaching Folly
As of September 13, McClellan knew where all the pieces were on the chessboard, but Lee did not. But McClellan still had to move his forces through two passes at South Mountain to get at Lee’s army. The division of Major General Lafayette McLaws covered Crampton’s Gap, which led to Pleasant Valley, then on to Harpers Ferry. Farther north, Major General D. H. Hill blocked the way through Turner’s Gap and nearby Fox’s Gap.
McClellan assigned one corps to barge through Crampton’s Gap on September 14 to relieve Harpers Ferry. McLaws gave ground grudgingly before the overcautious Major General William B. Franklin’s force. The Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry fell to the three surrounding Confederate divisions in the nick of time early on the 15th, making moot Franklin’s relief effort.
Meanwhile, the grossly outnumbered D. H. Hill held Turner’s Gap for much of September 14 against the two corps of Major Generals Joseph Hooker and Jesse Reno, both under the overall command of Major General Ambrose Burnside. By sunset, Hill’s position was outflanked on both sides, so his battered division retreated. No matter, Hill and McLaws bought time for Lee to send southward the mountain of supplies captured at Harpers Ferry and pick a defensive position for the impending battle.
Lee’s choice of ground was reckless. The Army of Northern Virginia was making its stand just east of Sharpsburg, Maryland. Looking east from the town, there was a mix of farms, fields, and woods, bracketed by Antietam Creek in the east and the Potomac River to the west. The only crossing over the Potomac was Boteler’s Ford, two miles south of Sharpsburg. There would be no way Lee could funnel his entire army through that single ford in a hurry if he had to retreat. If pressed, his army could be pinned against the Potomac and destroyed. Worse, Lee’s army of around 40,000 was not “all there.” Longstreet’s corps was fully deployed, but not all of Jackson’s divisions had arrived as of the evening of September 16, just as McClellan’s Army appeared three or four miles away.
Did Lee really think he could break every rule in the book, just because he was facing the once-beaten McClellan? Was Lee being smart—or arrogant?
Cockiness Turns to Desperation
The Battle of Antietam began on McClellan’s right, at the northern third of the battle line. At dawn on September 17, Hooker’s corps crossed Antietam Creek and approached Jackson’s corps, just on the other side of a cornfield, its line running through two stands of woods. Within ninety minutes, attack and counterattack pretty much wrecked both corps. A third of Jackson’s old division was dead, dying, or wounded. The division of Major General John Hood suffered 60 percent losses driving back Hooker’s corps, which also lost one-third of its number. Bodies clad in blue and gray carpeted the blood-christened ground. To veterans and historians, this became “the Cornfield,” set apart from the mundane by such fearful bloodshed.
The corps of Major General Joseph Mansfield marched to reinforce Hooker. Mansfield insisted on leading his corps from the front—and was gunned down when his lead brigade made contact with what was left of Hood’s division. Command devolved upon Brigadier General Alpheus Williams, Mansfield’s senior division commander. The two divisions of Williams’s command pushed through the woods east of the Cornfield, getting to within two hundred yards of the Dunker Church to the west, in the next stand of trees. Jackson was desperately reorganizing his line, dragooning anybody who could work a cannon or shoulder a musket to hold the line. Hooker was rallying his broken units to renew his attack when he took a bullet to the foot and had to leave the field. That attack stalled with the loss of its leader.
It was 9 A.M. Williams held his ground and requested reinforcements, his signalman rendering the message into semaphore. Two miles away, another signalman peering through a telescope relayed the message to McClellan, who always led from the rear. He now sent in Major General Edwin Sumner’s corps to restart the assault.
Sumner’s tactical ability was limited to attacking straight ahead, provided he had orders and a clear picture of the situation. He was typical of many Union commanders in the war’s earlier years—too reluctant to exercise initiative, too reliant on written orders, which were never exceeded. Sumner arrived with his corps to find no one with a clear view of the entire situation, as both corps commanders were stricken and Williams only had partial knowledge of what was happening around the Cornfield. As Sumner tried to figure out what to do, his two divisions under Major Generals John Sedgwick and William French marched off in separate directions toward the enemy, thus ensuring that Sumner would not be fighting his corps as a single force.
With few reserves handy, Lee committed McLaws’s division to reinforce Jackson and counterattack Sedgwick’s division, causing it to break and retreat. French’s division hit the sector controlled by D. H. Hill, whose regiments were strengthened by their placement in a sunken road that acted like a natural trench. Hard fighting would also rename this ground as “the Sunken Road,” also known as “Bloody Lane.” (By battle’s end, Bloody Lane would be paved with Confederate dead.)
The division of Israel Richardson from Sumner’s corps arrived to reinforce French’s attack. The Confederate batteries posted on the rise behind D. H. Hill’s line were losing the artillery duel to the Union guns. A Confederate brigadier tried to swap out a used regiment with fresh men at the right end of the Sunken Road, only to have his entire brigade break and run in front of Richardson’s division. This unwound Lee’s center. Two divisions fell back in disorder. Richardson pushed his division farther, taking the high ground behind the Sunken Road and trashing Lee’s center. But the attack lost steam when Richardson was mortally wounded by artillery fire.
It was now early afternoon. Another corps under Franklin was close by, just behind the forces of Sumner and Williams. But Sumner thought it folly to press the attack with Franklin’s fresh troops. McClellan concurred via signal flags, proving once again that misfortune favored the knave. (Lee’s luck depended on fools such as these.)
McClellan was expecting Lee to attack his center, and so he kept Fitz-John Porter’s corps and the cavalry of Alfred Pleasanton handy to repel it. The Army of Northern Virginia was fighting for its life, unlikely to attack. But the repulse of Sedgwick’s division made McClellan fearful that Lee might pull another trick out of his hat that could win the battle.
A Bridge Too Near
This battle, like a play, would have three acts. With the first two acts having passed through Lee’s left and center, act three would take place on Lee’s right flank, starring the inept Ambrose Burnside. His overall command consisted of the corps commanded by General Jacob Cox, filling in for Reno, who died in battle at Turner’s Gap.
Cox’s corps was facing the Rohrbach Bridge, which spanned a deeper stretch of Antietam Creek, where crossings were few and far between. The bridge acted like a bottleneck, preventing Burnside from bringing many men to bear against the defenders on the other side. Wooded high ground overlooked both banks of the creek, giving advantage to the Confederates, who could concentrate their fire on the bridge.
Around 9 A.M., as all hell was breaking loose for Hooker, Mansfield, and Jackson, McClellan ordered Burnside to take the bridge and pin Lee’s forces from the south. Burnside spent the next three hours trying to rush the span with a few regiments making piecemeal attacks. Lee thought so little of this threat that he actually peeled off a division and a brigade from this sector to reinforce his left.
Burnside tried to turn the enemy position by marching a division south to find a ford across Antietam Creek, then march back north to outflank the 3,000 men holding Lee’s right. Poor reconnaissance turned that march into a fool’s errand until a good crossing could be located. The division eventually arrived too late to make a difference.
Finally, a two-regiment task force charged across the Rohrbach Bridge around noon, just as Confederate fire slackened for lack of ammunition. Like all bloody landmarks at Antietam, the Rohrbach Bridge became Burnside’s Bridge. It took 500 Union and 120 Confederate dead to rename it. Now Burnside’s exhausted lead brigades were nearly out of ammo. More time was wasted as he ordered a fresh division over the bridge. It would be 2 P.M. before it arrived—roughly two hours after taking the bridge.
Lee was also playing a game of patience. He did not shift any troops from his left to meet the growing threat to his right. He had one last card up his sleeve: A. P. Hill’s Light Division of Jackson’s corps. Starting the day at Harpers Ferry, A. P. Hill’s division received orders at 9 A.M. to hurry to Sharpsburg, some seventeen miles away. He marched the five brigades of his division there in less than eight hours, with his lead brigade arriving around 3 P.M. And it was in the nick of time.
Burnside had ordered Cox to lead a two-division assault toward Sharpsburg, hoping to cut the road south to Boteler’s Ford—the lifeline of Lee’s army. But the thrust was blunted as the Light Division’s brigades ran into Cox’s lead units. Cox cautiously pulled his forces back to cover the approaches to the Rohrbach Bridge.
At the north end of the battlefield, Lee tried one more time to outflank McClellan’s right, but it came to naught quickly when the attack met fire from a thirty-four-gun line placed on high ground by acting corps commander George Meade, filling in for the wounded Hooker. Daylight was fading, and Lee was out of options. It was 7 P.M. when the roar of battle faded into a spattering of potshots.
Sundown, Cease-fire, Spin
It took just twelve hours to make the Battle of Antietam the worst single day of combat in the Civil War. McClellan lost 12,350 men out of 70,000 and failed to bring roughly one-third of his force into battle. Even badly handled, the Union’s greater numbers could have destroyed Lee’s army by attrition alone. Lee’s losses were far more severe—13,700 out of 39,000 troops.
Lee held the field for one more day, then pulled his troops back across the Potomac. McClellan did not pursue. By possessing the battlefield after the last shot was fired, McClellan “won.” That was good enough for Lincoln to pull out the scrap of paper he had been hiding in his desk, better known as the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the Confederacy as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln had just moved the Union’s war goal from reunification to revolution. Once word of the battle and the subsequent emancipation made it to Europe, the window of opportunity for British intervention was firmly nailed shut. Great Britain, which had freed its own slaves decades before, could not side with the Confederacy without the government of Prime Minister Palmerston risking electoral defeat.
Lincoln then nagged McClellan to cut Lee off from further retreat and destroy his army. The Army of the Potomac didn’t start moving until October 21, long after Lee’s forces made their getaway. It became apparent to Lincoln that McClellan had no strategy of what to do next. On November 7, after the midterm elections, McClellan was fired. Command was now turned over to Burnside—not a great improvement.
Lee would repeat his pattern of brilliant generalship, racking up two more decisive victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Then he would again succumb to overconfidence and arrogance, fighting over some little-known Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.