The Battles at Antietam

So imagine it is early morning in September, 1862, and you are a young soldier whose company has found a small bit of relief under a command to halt near the banks of a flowing stream called Antietam. There are rolling acres of farmland surrounding you, fields of corn whispering in the breeze, gleaming like liquid gold under the sun’s orange warmth. You can see a white-washed church, and there are stone-stacked bridges, in the distance, spanning the length of the stream where already you have stopped to unpack. Thousands of men are doing the same, and amidst the blurring of tan and wool-gray uniforms there is nervous chatter. There is the clanking of muskets and bayonets. Several small fires are being made and you begin to smell cornmeal. There are excited murmers when it becomes known that a light breakfast of johnnie cakes and coffee will be allowed. Major General Thomas Jackson is also nearby, and he is gazing steadily across the sloping fields. You catch a glimpse of the man who will try, desperately, to hold back the flood of blue-uniformed soldiers pouring in from a thickened patch of woods. “Stonewall” is a hero and you place your trust in his decisions; in an hour’s time you finish a hurried meal, begin to once more pack your gear, and you move toward the center of a cornfield where Jackson has ordered his regiments. The yellow-gold corn is taller than you, but the bayonet on the end of your musket just reaches the top of the papery stalks. The deadly weapon glints brightly in the sunshine. It is September 17, 1862, and you wait, in the morning’s hot sunshine, for an attack to begin.

And this Battle of Antietam will prove to be the bloodiest single day battle in American History. In just under 12 hours the North will lose 13,000 men, and the South will lose 10,000. The counts are not exaggerated – they include those men killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or “lost.” And the battle in the cornfield will become the scene of some of the most intense carnage of the day; here it is a blur of blue and gray, of guns and bayonets, of blood and sweat, of misery and death. The battle comes quickly. Men are screaming and howling and beating and stabbing each other in a murderous rage. So many are killed so quickly that it begins to seem the corn has been sheared by the fallen. Blood seeps the ground and the field becomes a tacky bog. The sky is alive with grapeshot (a small, lead canon-ball that looks like a grape) and the cries of men whose bones have been shattered. The casualties are horrifying and the yelling of soldiers is deafening as “control” of the cornfield sways back and forth – the Union generals will command a new rush of attacks as many as fifteen times.

Stonewall Jackson is on horseback, trying to rally your company. The Union objective is the white-washed church (Dunker’s Church) in the distance; to get there they must first secure this cornfield. The Union commander, Joseph Hooker, knows this. And he will sacrifice 2500 men in two hours to do it. The field becomes steeped in rows and rows of dead or wounded soldiers. Hooker is himself shot in the foot, and in another two hours he will be unable to command his men to move any further. There is a strange stall in the fighting, and a wild look in men’s eyes as they step away from each other. This battle in the cornfield has become a bloody stalemate… even when new fighting begin to form around its edges.

Now imagine that you are one of those young Confederate soldiers, and that you have been lucky enough to survive. You’ve taken a coat and a pair of shoes from a dead Union man, you’ve lost your knapsack, and you are being forced to retreat even as the gun in your hands is on fire from constant shooting. There is blood in your hair, on your clothes, on your hands… it is everywhere. And there is no time to gather the wounded who are crying for bandages and water. There is no time to think. Already there is a roar in the distance where Union soldiers are trying to take one of the bridges spanning this creek. There is also fighting from the woods, where another stalemate is underway in a place that will later be nicknamed “Bloody Lane.”

The Battle of Antietam is a series of smaller skirmishes known as the “Cornfield,” then “Bloody Lane,” and finally “Burnside’s Bridge.” It does not matter to you that this is a part of General Robert E. Lee’s overall strategy to take the War to the North; you are weary, tired, and aching in every bone in your body. You are watching the continued advances of Union soldiers against the position held by General A.P. Hill… and worrying, too, that soon you will be called to stiffen the defenses on the sloping hills. There is a hard-packed roadway that is not used anymore, and it forms a sort of indented “lane” where the blue-clad soldiers are being shot down, relentlessly. They keep coming, though, and they pour over the rocks and bolders like rushing water. You understand that Lee is being forced to retreat. At Bloody Lane the Union commanders will sacrifice 1800 of 5000 men in two hours to ensure it.

Your eyes sweep over the hills and you can see another fight, this one over a single bridge. The sun is hot in the afternoon and you wonder why the Union troops don’t just wade through the creek’s waters in their efforts to get to Longstreet’s men. There is shouting and you glimpse the figure of Robert E. Lee and you can see what he is seeing – the Union soldiers can do nothing but advance on the bridge as the creek underneath is protected by two-foot sloping hills. To wade through the water and then attempt to move up the slippery hill would be suicide… although there are soldiers who are trying to do it, as the bridge has become bottle-necked. The Union soldiers keep coming, even as the Confederate guns cut them down. They just keep coming. The Union commander, aptly named “Burnside,” keeps sending them. You fear your own company will soon be marched toward the fray, but you are still positioned near the cornfield, and by supper-time the fighting has ceased and you understand that it is the Union soldiers who are pulling back. The Union commander Burnside is appalled by the casualties and he is moving quickly away from the bridge… and, indeed, entirely away from the battle, itself. He has lost his nerve. It is understandable. And you can see the dust kicking up from the horse’s retreat. It is an army of men, so many men, moving in frayed columns away from you. The blurring of their blue coats begins to blend with the dusky horizon.

You have survived the Battle of Antietam, and though you do not yet know it, the single most bloody day in the History of America. You are one of the lucky ones. Even as your feet are blistered and your body is aching, you are asked to help in the recovery of the Confederate wounded – and the stacking of the Union and Confederate dead. Small fires are being made and the orange light bobs here and there in the falling sunset. There is the smell of coffee, but your stomach churns. There is also a stronger stench of blood and death. General Robert E. Lee is making plans with Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, but you begin to reallize that the Union army has made a full retreat, and they will not be returning the next day. It is a bitter victory, if it can be called one, and there are murmurs of excitement that the Union has been whipped. Such murmurs are mixed with the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. And Lee, whose “invasion of the North” has faltered, can provide little comfort. You understand that there will be time for a bit of sleep, and then a full day of moving backward, toward Virginia. You do not yet know it, but by December you will be engaged in another battle atFredericksburg.