Lee was becoming concerned for the regiments he had sent to the east. There was a report in the army that a Southern sympathizer had come through the lines during the night, bringing word that McClellan had found the “Lost Order.” Whether Lee learned of this is uncertain, but he could not have remained long in doubt that the enemy had gained rare insight into his plans. While Jackson waited at Harpers Ferry for McLaws and Walker to close in from the north, and Lee watched the threatening developments from near Hagerstown, Harvey Hill was forced to fight a strange battle at South Mountain.
Hill was unfamiliar with the peaks he was to defend and was slow in getting his men to the heights. When he had moved but three thousand of them into place, he could look eastward to a sight which moved him, the oncoming Federal army: “The marching columns extended back as far as eye could see in the distance; but many of the troops had already arrived and were in double lines of battle, and those advancing were taking up positions as soon as they arrived. It was a grand and glorious spectacle, and it was impossible to look at it without admiration. I had never seen so tremendous an army before, and I did not see one like it afterward.”
Hill fought poorly on his little mountain, even considering the meagerness of his strength. Though his men met the enemy with courage, their commander seemed at a loss, and in an unconscious moment he confessed his discomfort in a role of independent command. “I do not remember ever to have experienced a feeling of greater loneliness. It seemed as though we were deserted ‘by all the world and the rest of mankind.’”
Hill was saved by the timidity or stupidity of McClellan’s field officers, for the Yankee skirmishers, after they had rolled the few Rebels off the commanding ridge of South Mountain, were halted in their tracks, as if their officers could not conceive of their having been successful on this height. Hill’s men took a welcome two-hour rest from fighting, and when the enemy resumed attacks, reinforcements had come up. By nightfall, the arrival of Longstreet’s vanguard gave Hill security. After lunging toward the exposed army of Lee, McClellan had paused, hesitated, and now his momentum was lost.
Jackson, across the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, had no reassurance of Federal difficulties as September fourteenth dawned. He had troubles of his own.
His signalmen were in touch with General Walker, across the river, but could not reach McLaws. Walker’s big guns were in place and ready to join the cannonade upon Harpers Ferry. He was anxious to begin.
Jackson soon learned the cause of the delay in McLaws’s arrival. His column had been attacked from the rear. A brief, savage battle was fought by McLaws, who ended in confusion as did Harvey Hill, higher on the mountain. But here, too, the Federals halted just when they had victory in their grasp.
Jackson could do little but stare over the broad river at its junction with the Shenandoah. The day dragged on with Stonewall complaining of the slow progress of signals and the failure of McLaws to appear. In the afternoon, he advanced one brigade slightly, toward Harpers Ferry, and this simple move seemed to panic the enemy, who fell back from a strong position at the mere sight of the gray files. With limited artillery fire, Jackson closed the ring tighter about the town. At dark he wrote Lee:
Through God’s blessing, the advance which commenced this evening, has been successful thus far, and I look to Him for complete success tomorrow. The advance has been directed to resume at dawn tomorrow morning. I am thankful that our loss has been small.
When Lee read that, he felt relief for the first time since his adventure had begun to escape his control. The commander had been on the point of sending D. H. Hill’s hard-pressed men south of the Potomac, and retreating with his entire army, thus bringing the invasion to an end. Now, with the reassuring news that Jackson would soon be free of his task, Lee returned to his original plan. The army could concentrate to the westward and receive the enemy.
Jackson prepared the final blow at Harpers Ferry during the night, and through the hours of darkness men and animals strained to lift the guns into position. In the first light, a circle of guns began to flame, and after an hour of this fire the garrison was overcome. Answering fire, never heavy, dwindled and ceased, and almost before the infantry attack could get into the open, the Union men emerged with a white flag.
Jackson received General Julius White from the garrison, and staff officers noted the contrast between the immaculate Union victim and the dusty, wrinkled conqueror. White asked for terms. Jackson refused, saying that surrender must be unconditional. White was turned over to A. P. Hill and was soon delighted to learn that Jackson, overcome by a fit of generosity—or puzzled as to how to care for prisoners—had paroled the eleven thousand captive officers and men and allowed them to keep their small arms. The Federal property was seized, excepting a supply of rations, which he allowed the garrison to eat.
Jackson wrote Lee that he was coming to his aid, leaving only A. P. Hill on the scene at Harpers Ferry. He promised to move when he had fed his troops. Hill would have to care for most of the seventy-three big guns and thirteen thousand muskets captured in the town.
Old Jack soon tore his men away from captured food and put his column in motion. He found time to speak with Stuart’s strutting von Borcke at the time of departure: “Ah, this is all very well, Major, but we have yet much hard work ahead of us.”
Douglas overheard a well-fed captive call as Jackson passed, “Boys, he ain’t much for looks, but if we’d had him we wouldn’t have got caught in this trap.” The Union ranks shouted at sight of Jackson, and he exchanged salutes with them. A Northern reporter found Old Jack unimpressive and “seedy,” and “in general appearance was in no respect to be distinguished from the mongrel, barefooted crew who follow his fortunes. I had heard much of the decayed appearance of the rebel soldiers, but such a looking crowd! Ireland in her worst straits could present no parallel, and yet they glory in their shame.”
By midafternoon, the ragged men were already on their way to the rescue of Lee—who had asked Jackson to meet him at Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Jackson pushed them all night, for the situation at Sharpsburg had become threatening. McClellan was advancing as if ready to attack. Old Jack’s men rejoined the army early on September sixteenth, after a march of sixteen miles that even their commander found “severe.” With Jackson and Longstreet at hand, Lee now had twenty-two brigades to face the enemy and could make a stout fight. If McClellan did not attack at once, perhaps McLaws and Walker would arrive with their men, perhaps A. P. Hill would complete the paroling of prisoners at Harpers Ferry and take his place in the line. If all the troops could be assembled, Lee would be ready for a major battle. McClellan gave him one more day’s respite.
General Walker arrived at Sharpsburg in the afternoon, increasing Lee’s strength; but it was still just twenty-five thousand. Three divisions were missing, and if they came up before the blue masses across Antietam Creek surged forward, the Confederates would have but forty thousand troops, as against the eighty-seven thousand of McClellan.
Walker found Lee curiously calm: “If he had had a well-equipped army of 100,000 veterans at his back he could not have appeared more composed and confident.” The day before, Lee had ventured the opinion that McClellan would not attack despite his vast strength. But tonight he revealed his anxiety by sending riders splashing over the Potomac with urgent messages for A. P. Hill: He must hurry. The life of the army was at stake.
There were a few vicious stabs by the enemy as night drew on. Artillery banged away, and in some spots the skirmish lines tangled. The enemy appeared in great numbers. There was promise of early slaughter tomorrow.
Jackson seemed apprehensive of what lay ahead. At about ten o’clock, General Hood asked Old Jack to allow his Texans to retire from the front line so that they could cook. His men were near starvation, Hood said. He had already asked Lee for help, but the commander had no replacements. Jackson agreed to spread his thin line, if Hood would return tomorrow in case of need. In a soft rain, with pickets fretful a
nd firing at shadows, two brigades from Ewell’s old division went into the line and the Texans moved to the rear.
The Confederate line lay in a crude arc, on knolls between the village of Sharpsburg and Antietam Creek, facing the rolling country which looked toward South Mountain in the east. Both right and left the flanks came near the Potomac, which coiled about the town. From north to south, the divisions were placed: Jackson (with the troops of D. H. Hill included) along the Hagerstown Road; Longstreet, spraddling the Boonsboro Road and shielding the village; and last, General Walker, on the lower flank overlooking the Antietam.
There were striking landmarks, soon to become famous in the history of these armies: Burnside’s Bridge, to earn its name on the flank of Longstreet; a Dunker Church on Hagerstown Road, with groves near by known as East Wood and West Wood; and, not far from the church, a farm road to be known as Bloody Lane.
Jackson, holding the upper part of this position, felt the first Union thrust in the darkness before dawn. At the first light, artillery began. McClellan had long delayed, for reasons which were to remain obscure. The Federal commander realized that some of Lee’s divisions had been south of the Potomac. Perhaps the mere presence of Lee had deepened his instinct of caution. His discovery of the Lost Order had brought him to Sharpsburg, but for one long day had not overcome his timidity.
This morning, however, he was fully awake. At six thirty, a crushing attack by Hooker’s corps caved a huge gap in Lee’s line between Jackson and Hill. This drive routed the brigade of Lawton and brushed aside the heavy reinforcements of three brigades as if they were nothing. Federals were streaming along the Hagerstown Road and taking strong positions in the wood about the Dunker Church.
Jackson called up Hood’s men, but they could do little more than join the stubborn retreat. Already the army was in danger of annihilation. A scramble ensued at Lee’s headquarters, as the commander sought every available man in an effort to stem the tide until the troops of McLaws and Anderson could arrive from the south. They were near by in Sharpsburg, resting after an exhausting march, but Lee hurried them into the breach.
Lee was improvising a perilous concentration, pulling men from the right and center to help Jackson in his effort to repair the left. The Confederate line was now defended weakly by seven brigades along a front of a mile and a half, where McClellan might attack at any moment. But Lee had little choice. He must halt the enemy on the north, or the war might well end for him today. Nor was Jackson’s plight his only concern. At some distance from the furious fighting at the Dunker Church, D. H. Hill’s three thousand men were caught in such intense action that they had long ago forgotten their flanks and fought for their lives. General Anderson’s brigade now moved into the line.
The army was without reserves. Until A. P. Hill came marching up from the river, there was nothing to be done but fight with the outnumbered men already so heavily engaged.
After he had withstood the enemy fire for more than an hour, General Hood sent a message: “Tell General Jackson unless I get reinforcements I must be forced back, but I am going on while I can.” Hood’s men were running out of ammunition and giving ground. To a fellow officer who asked where Hood’s division was, the Texan replied, “Dead on the field.”
Not far from this scene was the big cornfield where so many men were to die. Major Rufus Dawes of the Federal army, who came in with his Wisconsin boys, wrote:
“As we appeared at the edge of the corn, a long line of men in butternut and gray rose up from the ground. Simultaneously, the hostile battle lines opened a tremendous fire upon each other. Men, I can not say fell; they were knocked out of the ranks by the dozens. But we jumped over the fence and pushed on, loading, firing, and shouting.… There was … great … excitement … reckless disregard of life …
“Everybody tears cartridges, loads, passes guns, or shoots.… The men are loading and firing with demoniacal fury and shouting and laughing hysterically, and the whole field before us is covered with rebels fleeing for life, into the woods. Great numbers of them are shot while climbing over the high post and rail fences along the turnpike. We push on over the open fields half way to the little church. The powder is bad, and the guns have become very dirty. It takes hard pounding to get the bullets down, and our firing is becoming slow. A long and steady line of rebel gray … comes sweeping down through the woods around the church. They raise the yell and fire. It is like a scythe running through our line. ‘Now save, who can.’ It is a race for life that each man runs for the cornfield … the headlong flight continues … Of 280 men who were at the cornfield and pike, 150 were killed or wounded. This was the most dreadful slaughter to which our regiment was subjected in the war.”
This and near-by fighting had all but wrecked the Confederate army. More than half of two brigades—Lawton’s and Hays’s—had been killed or wounded at the first attack. General Lawton was wounded, as were two other commanders, John R. Jones and Starke, the latter mortally. The First Texas had lost eight successive color bearers; the Tenth Georgia lost 57 per cent of its men.
But somehow, though the most courageous officers were becoming desperate, the front began to reform. Strangely, McClellan had not flung his fresh and heavy corps into the breach won by Hooker’s assault. There was, however, scarcely time to take notice of this tactical error on the fighting line. General Hood had called, “For God’s sake, more troops.”
In the sunken road becoming known as Bloody Lane broke out fighting that was to be celebrated as the most terrible of the war. Some of it was seen by the Federal, Thomas Livermore, of New Hampshire:
“I heard old General Richardson cry out … and saw that gallant old fellow advancing … almost alone, afoot and with his bare sword in his hand, and his face as black as a thunder cloud … and he roared out, ‘God damn the field officers!’…
“We swept over the road into the cornfield … and down into a ravine … all the time being pelted with canister.… We opened a withering, literally withering, fire on the rebels.…
“On looking around me I found that we were in the old, sunken road … In this road there lay so many dead rebels that they formed a line which one might have walked upon as far as I could see, many … killed by the most horrible wounds of shot and shell, and they lay just as they had been killed apparently, amid the blood which was soaking the earth. It was on this ghastly flooring that we kneeled for the last struggle.”
The Federals next swung their piecemeal attack to the Confederate center. Here Colonel John B. Gordon of Lee’s front line was cut down with five wounds. Gordon had taken his place with ringing oratory: “These men are going to stay here, General, till the sun goes down or victory is ours!”
General R. H. Anderson had fallen in this area, and, like other units robbed of their officers, his brigade began to wander. The situation deteriorated to the point where General D. H. Hill dismounted and led a futile charge of some two hundred infantrymen against Federal guns. Longstreet joined a battery, held the horses and helped call the results of the fire as the cannon held off the enemy from a gap in his line.
Just as it seemed that the center must cave in, taking the entire army to ruin, there came a lull. For the second time, with a great body of fresh troops at hand, the enemy failed to press the advantage. The battle droned away to an artillery duel in the hot hour after noon.
It appeared that Jackson’s wing had passed its fiery crisis. For more than six hours, Stonewall had struggled to prevent the battle being snatched from his hands. Despite the furious charge and countercharge of the morning, he had played a major role in saving the army this morning.
In the face of ruin, he could not forget his compulsion for attack. Once, during the morning, he saw the Thirty-third North Carolina of Colonel Matt Ransom charge Federal guns but come running back. He ordered Ransom to try once more. Ransom said the guns were too heavily supported. Jackson scoffed. He called for a volunteer to climb a tall tree, and Private William Hood was soon high in the limbs. Jacks
on looked up.
“How many troops can you see over there?”
“Oceans of them.”
“Count the flags, sir!”
“One, two, three.” Federal sharpshooters sent bullets winging through the tree, clipping foliage. Jackson took no notice, and the private continued to count under the fire until he had reached “Thirty-nine!”
Even for Jackson, there were too many regiments to permit a charge by Ransom, and he fell then to arguing with the North Carolinian as to why he had dared to attack so heavy a formation.
Stonewall remained with his staff in the West Wood near the Dunker Church in the fury of the first Union attack, and even as he saw his line overwhelmed by numbers, he made plans for attack. While men went mad in the cornfield and Bloody Lane, and Hood’s Texans were disintegrating, and all commanders called for reinforcements, the cool, detached mind of Jackson turned to attack.
He displayed no excitement when he sent an aide to General Walker at the heaviest of the fighting: Support Hood, clear the enemy from West Wood, put men between the church and the nearest artillery battery. And as Walker thus held the line and for a moment stabilized the front, Jackson rode to find General McLaws, and told him to strike at the right of the enemy’s attack. He rode swiftly for several minutes, giving the orders himself.
It was the result of that work which sent the “long and steady line of rebel gray” sweeping into the cornfield, and in an instant put General Sedgwick’s big Federal division in such straits that an officer wrote: “Change of front was impossible. In less time than it takes to tell it the ground was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded.… Nearly 2,000 men were disabled in a moment.”
At the climax of this, Jackson, sitting his horse near McLaws, was moved by the yelping of the Rebel Yell over the fields, and he said, “God has been very kind to us this day.”
He was to see nothing so incredible as victory, however, even on his limited front. The Federals soon had heavy reinforcements and support from their fine artillery, and they turned to break Jackson’s attack with great slaughter. He had once more confused the enemy and canceled other planned attacks, but Jackson had done little more than survive.
They Called Him Stonewall Page 35
