by Bruce Catton
At any rate, McClellan's order of battle for September 17 seems to have touched off all of Burnside's troubles. In a sense it left him all dressed up with no place to go. He was supposed to command two army corps, but one corps had been taken away from him. The one that remained had been commanded by Reno, and Reno had been killed on South Mountain; and Burnside, getting a bit stuffy for once in his career, refused to resume direct command of it because he felt that to do so would be to consent to a demotion. So he told General Cox, the ranking division commander, to assume command of the IX Corps; he, Burnside, would remain a wing commander even though the wing had been cut in half.
The result was that the IX Corps in this battle had two commanders—and no commander at all. McClellan gave his orders to Burnside, and Burnside majestically passed them on to Cox, and neither man was quite responsible for operations. Once the action began, there was likely to be a mix-up of the first magnitude.
On the afternoon of September 16, however, nobody foresaw any of that trouble. Along about four o'clock Hooker's corps pulled itself out of the fields along the Boonsboro road, followed a country lane back of the Pry house, and went splashing through the upper fords of the Antietam, with Hooker in the lead riding a magnificent white horse and looking every inch and quite consciously the gallant general. A soldier in the 6th Wisconsin remembered afterward that the way led through apple orchards and that the boys ducked out of ranks to fill their pockets and haversacks with the ripe fruit. Signal stations had been set up on the hills far ahead, and as they marched the men could see the flags wigwagging furiously. The corps began to climb through the rising farmland on its way to strike the Hagerstown road, and from the ridge to the west the move became visible, and Confederate guns banged away, groping ineffectually for the range.
The line of march led near the East Wood-that parklike open grove that lay half a mile northeast of the Dunker church—and the wood was occupied that afternoon by the Confederate division of
John B. Hood: two brigades of Texas and Mississippi troops who were generally considered the hardest fighters in all of Lee's army, which is about all the compliment any troops need. They had their pickets well out in front, and before long the Yankee skirmishers brushed into them and there was a brisk interchange of small-arms fire. General Meade came riding up, brusque and impatient, to look the situation over. He sent couriers dashing off, and in a few minutes he had his Pennsylvania division deployed in line of battle facing the wood, and the Bucktails went forward in a long skirmish line. The rifle fire became heavy, and the colonel of the Bucktails was killed, and smoke and early twilight filled the fringes of the wood. Both sides rolled guns forward to take a hand in the fight, and as these opened, the guns farther back reached out at long range to make their own contribution, and for an hour or more there was a really vicious little battle there under the trees. Far off to the Federal left, soldiers of the 8th Ohio crept up on a hill to watch in the gathering dusk, and one of them—filled with all of a soldier's enthusiasm for a fight in which he himself does not have to take part—wrote: "Nothing could have been more grand. The red glare of flame along the Rebel line for more than a mile, the bright streams of fight along the track of the shell, and the livid clouds of smoke as the shell burst in the air, constituted a spectacle brilliant beyond comparison."'4
The firing was heavy and sustained enough to make Longstreet believe that a major attack had been made and repulsed. But the Federals didn't want the East Wood just then—Hooker was simply trying to protect the flank of his corps as it marched into position farther north and west—and the firing died out at dusk. Meade drew his division off, and only the rival picket lines were left to snipe at each other, sullenly, in the evening dark. On the Confederate side Hood's division was drawn back out of the wood, and replacement troops were sent up to bivouac where they had fought.
Hooker took his men well to the north before halting for the night. Doubleday's division, in the lead (Hatch had been wounded at South Mountain, and Doubleday had the division now), got to the Hagerstown road and formed up facing directly to the south, with Meade's Pennsylvanians on its left and a little more to the south, and the third division, that of Ricketts, to the left of the Pennsylvanians. Having thus reached what looked like a good jumping-off place for the next day's battle, Hooker established his headquarters in a farmer's yard a little east of the turnpike, and his men spread their blankets where they had halted and turned in for a little sleep.
It wasn't a very good night for sleeping. It began to rain after the sun went down, and there were intermittent spells of what one veteran recalled as "dismal, drizzling rain" all through the night; and out in front the pickets were nervous, opening up now and then with a blaze of firing that occasionally stirred some of the batteries and caused them to join in, although it was too dark for the gunners to hit much of anything. The gunfire rose to such a pitch, once, that an aide roused Hooker and called him out of his tent, fearing that the Rebels might be beginning a night attack. Hooker stood in the farmyard and listened, the raindrops glistening on his florid, handsome face, and looked at the spurts of flame off in the dark, estimating the direction of the fire. Then he shook his head. "The Rebels must be firing into their own men—we haven't any troops off that way," he said. Then he went back to bed.
There was a tension in the atmosphere for the whole army that night. Survivors wrote long afterward that there seemed to be something mysteriously ominous in the very air—stealthy, muffled tramp of marching men who could not be seen but were sensed dimly as moving shadows in the dark; outbursts of rifle fire up and down the invisible picket lines, with flames lighting the sky now and then when gunners in the advanced batteries opened fire; taut and nervous anxiety of those alert sentinels communicating itself through all the bivouacs, where men tried to sleep away the knowledge that the morrow would bring the biggest battle the army had ever had; a ceaseless, restless sense of movement, as if the army stirred blindly in its sleep, with the clop-clop of belated couriers riding down the inky-dark lanes heard at intervals, sounding very lonely and far off. The 16th Connecticut, a new and almost completely untrained regiment, which was lying along the Antietam near the downstream bridge, fell into a panic and sprang wildly to arms once when some clumsy rookie accidentally discharged his musket. Veteran regiments nearby cursed them wearily, cursed the high command for banning all campfires—the Rebels had had all day to spot the Union positions, but the top brass had ruled out fires that night for security reasons— and glumly munched the handfuls of ground coffee they couldn't boil. In Richardson's division the men were marched to the ammunition wagons in the darkness to draw eighty rounds per man, twice the usual allotment; they accepted the grim omen in expressionless silence.
Not far from the Pry house Mansfield's corps had turned in for the night. The men had been there since the afternoon of the day before, and they had their pup tents up and were feeling snug; but along toward midnight Mansfield came riding up from the Pry house to corps headquarters and the outfit was summoned to move—no drums and no bugles, just officers going down the regimental streets from tent to tent, quietly rousing the men and telling them to pack up. The sleepy soldiers made up their blanket rolls, took their muskets, and went off in the darkness, crossing the Antietam where Hooker had crossed in the afternoon, and following the guides he had sent back, old Mansfield riding at the head. They stumbled along, blind as moles in the drizzling night, holding their canteens and bayonets as they went, to keep them from jingling, following the obscure roads while the sky to the left was periodically lit by the mock lightning of the fitful cannonade.
They tramped for several miles and finally were halted on somebody's farm to the north and east of where Hooker's men were posted. General Mansfield spread a blanket for himself on the grass in a fence corner next to a field where the 10th Maine had turned in. The Maine boys were wakeful and did a lot of chattering—the march in the rain had roused them, and the thought of what was coming in the morning
made it hard to go back to sleep—and the old general got up once and went over to shush them. They recalled that he was nice about it and not at all like a major general: just told them that if they had to talk they might as well do it in a whisper so that their comrades could get a little rest. And at last, long after midnight, there was quiet and the army slept a little.
How far they had marched, those soldiers—down the lanes and cross-lots over the cornfields to get into position, and from the distant corners of the country before that; they were marching, really, out of one era and into another, leaving much behind them, going ahead to much that they did not know about. For some of them there were just a few steps left: from the rumpled grass of a bed in a pasture down to a fence or a thicket where there would be an appointment with a flying bullet or shell fragment, the miraculous and infinitely complicated trajectory of the man meeting the flat, whining trajectory of the bullet without fail. And while they slept the lazy, rainy breeze drifted through the East Wood and the West Wood and the cornfield, and riffled over the copings of the stone bridge to the south, touching them for the last time before dead men made them famous. The flags were all furled and the bugles stilled, and the hot metal of the guns on the ridges had cooled, and the army was asleep—tenting tonight on the old camp ground, with never a song to cheer because the voices that might sing it were all stilled on this most crowded and most lonely of fields. And whatever it may be that nerves men to die for a flag or a phrase or a man or an inexpressible dream was drowsing with them, ready to wake with the dawn.
SIX
Never Call Retreat
1. Toward the Dunker Church
The morning came in like the beginning of the Last Day, gray and dark and tensely expectant. Mist lay on the ground, heavy as a fog in the hollow places, and the groves and valleys were drenched in immense shadows. For a brief time there was an ominous hush on the rolling fields, where the rival pickets crouched behind bushes and fence corners, peering watchfully forward under damp hatbrims. Little by little things began to be visible. The outlines of trees and farm buildings slowly came into focus against blurred backgrounds; the pickets grew more wary and alert, and when one of them saw movement in the half-light he raised his musket and fired. The two armies, lying so close in the rainy night, had been no more than half asleep; once aroused, they began to fight instinctively, as if knowing that the very moment of waking must lead to the fatal embrace of battle.
The random picket-firing increased as the light grew, and the advanced batteries were drawn into it. On the high ground around the Dunker church Stonewall Jackson had massed his artillery, and the gunners were astir early. As soon as they could see any details on the ridges to the north they sprang to their places and fired, and the men who were still in bivouac could feel the earth beneath them tremble faintly with the jar of the firing. Farther west, half a mile from the dusty line of the Hagerstown road, Jeb Stuart's horse artillery was drawn up on a wooded hill. When Jackson's guns opened, these guns began firing, too, and to the north and east the Yankee gunners returned the fire. Long before six o'clock the air shook with the rolling, rocking crash of gunfire.
Joe Hooker was up promptly, riding to the front before the light came. The men of his army corps had slept in a sheltered valley which ran eastward from the Hagerstown road, a mile or more north of the Dunker church, and Hooker went south through the bivouac, coming out on a wooded ridge and studying the landscape in the misty twilight. In front of him there was a broad field, sloping gentiy down to a hollow where there were an orchard, a patchwork of kitchen gardens and fences, and a big stone house, the home of a prosperous farmer named Miller. On the far side of the hollow, where the ground began to rise again, Mr. Miller had built a stout post-and-rail fence, going due east from the Hagerstown road to the edge of that pleasant grove which the generals were noting on their maps as the East Wood; and south of the fence, filling all of the ground between the road and the wood, was Mr. Miller's thriving cornfield —the cornfield, forever, after that morning. Beyond the cornfield and a little less than a mile from his present position Hooker could just see the white block of the Dunker church, framed by the dark growth of the West Wood. The high ground marked by that church was his objective; if it could be seized and held, Lee's whole army would have to retreat.
Hooker was an army politician and a devious man, approaching his ultimate goal—command of the Army of the Potomac—by roundabout ways which he discussed with nobody; but as a fighter he was direct and straightforward, and it was direct, straightforward fighting that was called for this morning. His army corps was camped due north of the Dunker church plateau; it would get there in the obvious way—by marching straight south, with Doubleday's division going along the Hagerstown road, Ricketts's division going through the East Wood, and Meade's Pennsylvanians going in between them. Each division would be massed so that reinforcements from the rear ranks could be hurried up to the front line quickly. Mansfield's corps was not far away and could be called on if Hooker's men needed help. Neither Hooker nor anyone else knew how many Rebels might be waiting in the cornfield and the wood. This was one of the things the advancing battle lines would have to find out for themselves. Meanwhile, it was time to get moving.
It was still early, and the gray light of the dawn was still dim. The army was awake, the men coming reluctantly out of sleep to the sound of the guns, knowing that this fight was going to be worse than anything they had ever been in before. Aroused by the cannon, the men reacted in their different ways. The 1st Minnesota, still safely behind the lines near McClellan's headquarters, noted the mist and the cloudy sky and profanely gave thanks that they would at least be fighting in the shade this day. (They were wrong, as it turned out; in another hour or two the mist would vanish and there would be a scorching sun all day.) Abner Doubleday found the men of his division hard to rouse; they took up their muskets and fell into ranks sluggishly, and they did not even grumble when they were marched off without time to boil coffee. Over in Mansfield's corps there was less of a rush and the men cooked sketchy breakfasts. There were many new regiments in this corps, and the veterans—quietly handing valuables and trinkets to members of the ambulance corps and other non-combat details for safekeeping—noticed with grim amusement that most of the straw-feet were too nervous to eat. In the 27th Indiana men stood up by their campfires to jeer and curse at one desperate soldier whose nerves had given way, out on the picket line, and who was running madly for the rear, oblivious of the taunts and laughter—a man whose legs had simply taken control of him. From one end of the army to the other, bivouacs were littered with discarded decks of cards. Card games were held sinful in that generation, and most men who were about to fight preferred not to have these tangible evidences of evil on their persons when they went out to face death.1
The men of Hooker's army corps left their bivouac and in heavy columns made their way through the timber to the ridge which was to be their jumping-off point. Some of the columns could be seen by the distant Confederate gunners, and the shells came over faster—the men had hardly started when one of Stuart's guns put a shell right in the middle of the 6th Wisconsin, knocking out thirteen men and bringing the column to a halt while stretcher-bearers ran in to carry off the wounded. The 90th and 107th Pennsylvania, moving up toward the outer fringe of the East Wood, also came within Stuart's range and had losses; and men were maimed for life who saw no more of the battle than a peaceful field and a sandy lane in the wood in the early light of dawn. As they reached the ridge the leading elements of the divisional columns sent out skirmish lines, and in the broad hollow of the Miller farm the sporadic pop-pop of picket firing became much heavier while the skirmish lines went down the slope-each man in the line separated from his fellows by half a dozen paces, holding his musket as if he were a quail hunter with a shotgun, moving ahead step by step, dropping to one knee to shoot when he found a target, pausing to reload, and then moving on again, feeling the army's way into the danger zone.
&
nbsp; Rebel skirmishers held the Miller farm in some strength, and there were many more along the fence by the cornfield. The sound of the musket fire suddenly rose to a long, echoing crash that ran from the highway to the East Wood and back again. The Confederate batteries to the south and off to the right stepped up the pace, and the shells came over faster. Beyond the hollow ground the green cornfield swayed and moved, although there was no wind. The glint of bayonets could be seen here and there amid the leafage, and long, tearing volleys came out of the corn, while wreaths of yellowish-white smoke drifted up above it as if the whole field were steaming. More men were hurt, and the Yankee skirmishers halted and took cover.
There was a pause, while the battle lines waited under fire. Then there was a great rush and a pounding of hoofs as Hooker's corps artillery dashed up into line—six batteries coming up at a mad gallop, gun carriages bouncing wildly with spinning wheels, drivers lashing the six-horse teams, officers riding on ahead and turning to signal with flashing swords when they reached the chosen firing line. In some of these batteries orders for field maneuvers were given by bugle, and the high thin notes could be heard above all the racket, the teams wheeling in a spatter of rising dust—veteran artillery horses knew what the bugle calls meant as well as the men did, and would obey without waiting to be told. In a few minutes three dozen guns were lined up on the slope, limbers a dozen yards to the rear, teamsters taking the horses back into the wood, gun crews busy with ramrod and handspike. The guns began to plaster the cornfield unmercifully, and the air above the field was filled with clods of dirt and flying cornstalks and knapsacks and broken muskets as the canister ripped the standing grain.
