by Shelby Foote
It was indeed. Receiving Lee’s summons at 6.30 that morning, Little Powell had left one brigade to complete the work at the Ferry, and put the other five on the road within the hour. Seventeen roundabout miles away, the crash and rumble of gunfire spurred him on—particularly when he drew near enough for the sound to be intensified by the clatter of musketry. Forgotten were Stonewall’s march regulations, which called for periodic rest-halts; Hill’s main concern was to get to Sharpsburg fast, however bedraggled, not to get there after sundown with a column that arrived well-closed and too late for a share in the fighting. Jacket off because of the heat, he rode in his bright red battle shirt alongside the panting troops, prodding laggards with the point of his saber. Beyond this, he had no dealings with stragglers, but left them winded by the roadside, depending on them to catch up in time if they could. Not many could, apparently; for he began the march with about 5000 men, and ended it with barely 3000. But with these, as was his custom, he struck hard.
In his path, here on the Federal left, was an outsized Connecticut regiment, 900-strong. That was a good many more soldiers than Hill had in any one of his brigades, but they were grass green, three weeks in service, and already considerably shaken by what they had seen of their first battle. To add to their confusion, a large proportion of the rebels bearing down on them wore new blue uniforms captured at Harpers Ferry. The first thing they received by way of positive identification was a close-up volley that dropped about four hundred of them and broke and scattered the rest. A Rhode Island outfit, coming up just then, was likewise confused, as were two Ohio regiments which arrived to find bluecoats fleeing from bluecoats and held their fire until they too were knocked sprawling. With that, the Union left gave way in a backward surge, pursued by Hill, whose men came after it, screaming their rebel yell. The panic spread northward to the outskirts of Sharpsburg, where several blue companies, meeting little resistance, had already entered the eastern streets of the town; Burnside’s whole line came unpinned, and presently the retreat was general. Toombs’ Georgians, along with the rest of Longstreet’s men, took up the pursuit and chased the Northerners back onto the heights they had spent the morning trying to seize.
And now in the sunset, here on the right, as previously on the left and along the center, the conflict ended; except that this time it was for good. Twilight came down and the landscape was dotted with burning haystacks, set afire by bursting shells. For a time the cries of wounded men of both armies came from these; they had crawled up into the hay for shelter, but now, bled too weak to crawl back out again, were roasted. Lee’s line was intact along the Sharpsburg ridge. McClellan had failed to break it; or, breaking it, had failed in all three cases, left and center and right, to supply the extra push that would keep it broken.
There were those in the Federal ranks who had been urging him to do just that all afternoon. Nor did he lack the means. The greater part of four divisions—two under Franklin, two under Porter: no less than 20,000 men, a solid fourth of his effective force—had stood idle while the battle raged through climax after climax, each of which offered McClellan the chance to wreck his adversary. But he could not dismiss the notion that somewhere behind that opposite ridge, or off beyond the flanks, Lee was massing enormous reserves for a knockout blow. The very thinness of the gray line, which was advanced as an argument for assaulting it, seemed to him to prove that the balance of those more than 100,000 rebels were being withheld for some such purpose, and when it came he wanted to have something with which to meet it.
“At this critical juncture,” he afterwards reported, “I should have had a narrow view of the condition of the country had I been willing to hazard another battle with less than an absolute assurance of success. At that moment—Virginia lost, Washington menaced, Maryland invaded—the national cause could afford no risks of defeat. Lee’s army might then have marched as it pleased on Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York … and nowhere east of the Alleghenies was there another organized force able to arrest its march.”
It never occurred to him, apparently, to look at the reverse of the coin: to consider that Lee’s army, like his own, was the only organized force that blocked the path to its capital. But it did occur to Sykes, who appealed to him, late in the day and in the presence of Porter, to be allowed to strike at the rebel center with his regulars. Part of one of his brigades had been up close to the western ridge, serving as a link between Sumner’s left and Burnside’s right, and its officers had seen that D. H. Hill was about to buckle—indeed, had buckled already, if someone would only take advantage of the fact. Let him launch an attack against that point, Sykes said, supported by Porter’s other division and one from Franklin, and he would cut Lee’s line in two, thereby exposing the severed halves to destruction.
At first McClellan seemed about to approve; but in the moment of hesitation he looked at Porter, and Porter slowly shook his head. “Remember, General,” one witness later quoted him as saying, “I command the last reserve of the last army of the republic.” That cinched it. The attack was not made. Porter and Franklin, who between them lost only 548 of today’s more than 12,000 casualties, remained in reserve.
As night came down, the two armies disengaged, and when the torches of the haystack pyres went out, darkness filled the valley of the Antietam, broken only by the lanterns of the medics combing the woods and cornfields for the injured who were near enough to be brought within the lines. Lee remained at his headquarters, west of Sharpsburg, greeting his generals as they rode up. Jackson, the two Hills, McLaws and Walker, Hood and Early, all had heavy losses to report. The gray commander spoke with each, but he seemed unshaken by the fact that more than a fourth of his army lay dead or wounded on the field. Nor did he mention the word that was in all their minds: retreat. “Where is Longstreet?” he asked, after he had talked with all the others. Presently Old Pete arrived, still limping in carpet slippers and still chewing on the unlighted cigar; he had stopped in the town to help some ladies whose house was on fire. Lee stepped forward to greet him. “Ah,” he said, placing his crippled hands on the burly Georgian’s shoulders. “Here is Longstreet. Here is my old warhorse.”
This last report was as gloomy as the others. The army was bled white and near exhaustion, with all its divisions on the firing line. Aside from a trickle of stragglers coming in, Lee’s only reserve, and in fact the only reserve in all northern Virginia, was the one brigade A. P. Hill had left to complete the salvage work at Harpers Ferry. All the generals here informally assembled were agreed that another day like today would drive the surviving remnant headlong into the Potomac. All, that is, but Lee. When he had heard his lieutenants out, he told them to return to their men, make such tactical readjustments as would strengthen their defenses, and see that rations were cooked and distributed along the present line of battle. If McClellan wanted another fight, he would give him one tomorrow.
McClellan, it seemed, wanted no such thing. Despite an early morning telegram to Halleck: “The battle will probably be renewed today. Send all the troops you can by the most expeditious route,” and a letter in which he told his wife: “[Yesterday’s battle] was a success, but whether a decided victory depends on what occurs today,” he soon took stock and found the portents far from favorable. Reno and Mansfield were dead, along with eight other general officers; Hooker was out of action, wounded; Sumner was despondent; Burnside was even doubtful whether his troops could hold the little they had gained the day before. After what he called “a careful and anxious survey of the condition of my command, and my knowledge of the enemy’s force and position,” McClellan decided to wait for reinforcements, including two divisions on the way from Maryland Heights and Frederick. As a result, the armies lay face to face all day, like sated lions, and between them, there on the slopes of Sharpsburg ridge and in the valley of the Antietam, the dead began to fester in the heat and the cries of the wounded faded to a mewling.
There were a great many of both, the effluvium of this bloo
diest day of the war. Nearly 11,000 Confederates and more than 12,000 Federals had fallen along that ridge and in that valley, including a total on both sides of about 5000 dead. Losses at South Mountain raised these doleful numbers to 13,609 and 14,756 respectively, the latter being increased to 27,276 by the surrender of the Harpers Ferry garrison. Lee had suffered only half as many casualties as he had inflicted in the course of the campaign; but even this was more than he could afford. “Where is your division?” someone asked Hood at the close of the battle, and Hood replied, “Dead on the field.” After entering the fight with 854 men, the Texas brigade came out with less than three hundred, and these figures were approximated in other veteran units, particularly in Jackson’s command. The troops Lee lost were the best he had—the best he could ever hope to have in the long war that lay ahead, now that his try for an early ending by invasion had been turned back.
Orders for the retirement were issued that afternoon, and at nightfall, in accordance with those orders, fires were kindled along the ridge to curtain the retreat across the Potomac. Longstreet went first, forming in support of Pendleton’s guns on the opposite bank. Two brigades of cavalry followed, then moved upstream, prepared to recross and harry the enemy flank in case the withdrawal was contested. Walker’s division was the last to cross. At sunup, as Walker followed the tail of his column into the waist-deep water of the ford, he saw Lee sitting his gray horse in midstream. Apparently he had been there all night. When Walker reported all of his troops safely across the river except some wagonloads of wounded and a battery of artillery, which were close at hand, Lee showed for the first time the strain he had been under. “Thank God,” he said.
That was in fact the general reaction, though in most cases it was expressed with considerably less reverence. Crossing northward two weeks ago, the bands had played “My Maryland” and the men had gaily swelled the chorus; but now, as one of the round-trip marchers remarked, “all was quiet on that point. Occasionally some fellow would strike up that tune, and you would then hear the echo, ‘Damn my Maryland.’ ” Another recorded his belief that “the confounded Yankees” could shoot straighter on their home ground. Nor was this aversion restricted to the ranks. “I have heard but one feeling expressed about [Maryland],” one brigadier informed his wife, “and that is a regret at our having gone there.” A youthful major on Lee’s own staff wrote home to his sister: “Don’t let any of your friends sing ‘My Maryland’—not ‘My Western Maryland’ anyhow.”
Presently there was apparent cause for greater regret than ever. Leaving Pendleton with forty-four guns and two slim brigades of infantry to discourage pursuit by holding the Shepherdstown ford, Lee moved the rest of his army into bivouac on the hills back from the river, then lay down under an apple tree to get some badly needed sleep himself. Not long after midnight he woke to find Pendleton bending over him. The former Episcopal rector was shaken and bewildered, and as he spoke Lee found out why. McClellan had brought up his heavy guns for counterbattery work, Pendleton explained, and then at the height of the bombardment had suddenly thrown Porter’s corps across the Potomac, driving off the six hundred rear-guard infantry and the startled cannoneers. All the guns of the Confederate reserve artillery had been captured.
“All?” Lee said, brought upright.
“Yes, General, I fear all.”
Unwilling to attempt a counterattack in the dark with his weary troops, Lee decided to wait for daylight. But when Jackson heard the news he was too upset to wait for anything. He had A. P. Hill’s men turn out at once and put them in motion for the ford, arriving soon after sunrise to find that things were by no means as bad as the artillery chief had reported. A subordinate had brought off all but four of the guns, and only a portion of Porter’s two divisions had crossed the river. “With the blessing of Providence,” Stonewall informed Lee, “they will soon be driven back.” They were. Hill launched another of his savage attacks: one of those in which, as he reported, “each man felt that the fate of the army was centered in himself.” Something over 250 Federals were shot or drowned in their rush to regain the Maryland bank, and when it was over, all who remained in Virginia were captives. Hill drew back to rejoin the main body, unpursued.
What at first had been taken for a disaster turned out in the end to be a tonic—a sort of upbeat coda, after the crash and thunder of what had gone before. The army moved on to Martinsburg, where by September 22 enough stragglers had returned to bring its infantry strength to 36,418. A week later, with all ten divisions—or at any rate what was left of them—resting between Mill Creek and Lick River, Lee wrote Davis: “History records but few examples of a greater amount of labor and fighting than has been done by this army during the present campaign.… There is nothing to report, but I desire to keep you always advised of the condition of the army, its proceedings, and prospects.”
He had occupied his present position near Winchester, he told the President, “in order to be prepared for any flank movement the enemy might attempt.” It soon developed, however, that he had no grounds for worry on that score. McClellan was not contemplating a flank movement. In point of fact, despite renewed pressure from Washington, McClellan was not contemplating any immediate movement at all. After completing the grisly and unaccustomed work of cleaning up the battlefield, he reoccupied Harpers Ferry with Sumner’s corps and spread the others along the north bank of the Potomac, guarding the fords. The main problem just now, as he saw it, was the old one he had always been so good at: reorganizing, drilling, and resupplying his 93,149 effectives. Lee’s strength—precisely tabulated at 97,445—forbade an advance, even if the Federal army had been in any condition to make one, which McClellan did not believe to be the case.
As he went about the familiar task of preparing his men for what lay ahead, he looked back with increasing pride on what had gone before. Originally he had been guarded in his pronouncements as to the outcome of the battle on the 17th. “The general result was in our favor,” he wrote his wife next morning; “that is to say, we gained a great deal of ground and held it.” But now that he had had time to consider the overall picture, he said, “I feel that I have done all that can be asked in twice saving the country.” He felt, too, “that this last short campaign is a sufficient legacy for our child, so far as honor is concerned.” And he added, rather wistfully: “Those in whose judgment I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly and that it is a masterpiece of art.”
3
For Lincoln it was something less, and also something more. The battle had been fought on a Wednesday. At noon Monday, September 22, he assembled at the White House all the members of his cabinet, and after reading them an excerpt from a collection of humorous sketches by Artemus Ward, got down to the business at hand. “When the rebel army was at Frederick,” he told them, “I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to anyone; but I made the promise to myself and”—hesitating slightly—“to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.” And with that he began to read from a manuscript which was the second draft of the document he had laid aside, two months ago today, on Seward’s advice that to have issued it then would have been to give it the sound of “our last shriek on the retreat” down the Peninsula. Second Bull Run had been even worse, particularly from this point of view. But now had come Antietam, and though it was scarcely a “masterpiece,” or even a clear-cut victory, Lincoln thought it would serve as the occasion for his purpose.
It was highly characteristic, and even fitting, that he opened this solemn conclave with a reading of the slapstick monologue, “High Handed Outrage at Utica,” not only because he himself enjoyed it, along with most of his ministers—all except Stanton, who sat glumly through the dialect performance, and Chase, who maintained his reputation for never laughing at anything at all—but also because it was in line with the delaying tactics and the attitude he
had adopted toward the question during these past two months. With the first draft of the proclamation tucked away in his desk, only awaiting a favorable turn of military events to launch it upon an unsuspecting world, he had seemed to talk against such a measure to the very people who came urging its promulgation. Presumably he did this in order to judge their reaction, as well as to prevent a diminution of the thunderclap effect which he foresaw. At any rate, he had not even hesitated to use sarcasm, particularly against the most earnest of these callers.
One day, for example, a Quaker woman came to request an audience, and Lincoln said curtly: “I will hear the Friend.” She told him she had been sent by the Lord to inform him that he was the minister appointed to do the work of abolishing slavery. Then she fell silent. “Has the Friend finished?” Lincoln asked. She said she had, and he replied: “I have neither the time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her?”
Similarly, on the day before the Battle of South Mountain, when a delegation of Chicago ministers called to urge presidential action on the matter, he inquired: “What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet. Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel states? Is there a single court or magistrate or individual that would be influenced by it there?… I will mention another thing, though it meet only your scorn and contempt. There are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union armies from the border slave states. It would be a serious matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they should go over to the rebels.” In parting, however, he dropped a hint. “Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement.… I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God’s will, I will do.”
