CHAPTER 14
NOON TO EVENING
BY THROWING THREE-QUARTERS OF HIS FORCE INTO THE FIGHT on Jackson’s front, Lee had repulsed McClellan’s poorly coordinated assault and neutralized three of his army corps. After the Federal storming of the Sunken Road and the retreat of Greene’s division from the Dunker Church, there was a lull in the fighting on this front, and Jackson expressed his certainty that “they have done their worst” on this part of the field and that “there is now no danger of the line being broken.”1
Jackson was right in thinking that the Federal attack in his sector had broken down. The Federal units engaged on the northern front had lost 28 percent of their strength, and six divisions had been seriously disorganized by their repulse. The divisions of French and Richardson were, for the moment, elated by their victory; but exhaustion would soon overtake them—they had been fighting intensely for hours and had taken heavy losses. The Federals had also lost two corps commanders, one of whom was also the wing commander, two of their best division commanders, and four brigadier generals. However, the Union still had a preponderance of strength that could be used on other fronts. McClellan had used a little less than half of his 72,500-man force so far, and his casualties (perhaps 10,000) amounted to only 14 percent of his command. In contrast, Lee had begun the day with fewer than 35,000 troops. Three-quarters of those men had already been committed to action, and upwards of 9,000 had become casualties—35 percent of his available strength. That total did not take into account the large number of men who were temporarily separated from their units—whether lost in the confusion of battle, frightened and in flight, or straggling. Casualty rates that approached or exceeded 30 percent usually rendered the units involved too weak in numbers and morale for offensive operations, and might well make them unfit for further action. The army’s command organization had also been impaired by the death or disabling of three division commanders and four brigadiers, and J. R. Jones’s Division was now commanded by a colonel.2
The situation in the center, where Longstreet was in immediate command, seemed especially dire. The infantry divisions that had held the battle line in the Sunken Road had been driven back in some disorder, and for the moment the defense here consisted of artillery with only minimal infantry support. In this moment of crisis and extreme vulnerability rank temporarily went by the boards. D. H. Hill picked up a musket and fought alongside his rallied infantry, while Longstreet took charge of an artillery battery.
The real danger to Lee’s position, however, lay southward from the Sunken Road. By throwing all of his reserve infantry into action north of Sharpsburg, Lee had thinned the rest of his line to the breaking point. The only infantry units not yet engaged were the brigades of D. R. Jones’s Division, supplemented by one cavalry brigade and some detached infantry from other commands—between four and five thousand troops. They were committed to the defense of two vital sectors: the road that led from the Middle Bridge to Sharpsburg; and the high ground south of Sharpsburg, which protected the road that ran west to the Shepherdstown and Boteler’s fords—the road by which A. P. Hill would be marching his desperately needed reinforcement. The Sharpsburg section of this line was exposed to a direct assault by the two V Corps divisions and the cavalry McClellan had massed above the Middle Bridge. The southern section could not be attacked until IX Corps had forced the crossing of the Lower Bridge. But Toombs’s Brigade of eight hundred men, defending the position, was heavily outnumbered and certain to be brushed aside whenever Burnside and Cox organized a serious attack. Once IX Corps was across, the Federals would have strength enough to overlap and outflank D. R. Jones’s line and threaten to cut Lee’s line of retreat to the Potomac fords. On this part of the field McClellan now enjoyed a vast preponderance of strength: seventeen thousand in V Corps and the cavalry near the Middle Bridge, thirteen thousand under Burnside and Cox at the Lower Bridge, against no more than five thousand Confederates.
MIDDAY CRISIS, NOON–2:30 PM
McClellan, however, could not see any of that from his Pry house headquarters. From the messages he had been receiving he could not be certain whether he was on the verge of “a great defeat or a most glorious victory.” He would use just those words in a telegram to General in Chief Halleck, sent at 1:25 PM—then scratch them out, and substitute a pious wish that God favor him with victory. But his doubts were real.
Since seven in the morning, he had been a distant spectator of the terrible combat that raged on the approaches to the Dunker Church, and he had had to send all of II Corps to reinforce Hooker’s wing. At 10:00 AM, Sumner had told him that almost the entire right wing of the army had been defeated and disorganized, forcing him to send Franklin’s VI Corps to that part of the field—not to mount an attack, but to prevent the right wing from being driven off the field by a Confederate counterattack. Under his gaze, the divisions of French and Richardson had locked in the prolonged firefight in front of the Sunken Road, so intense that McClellan thought their struggle the most “magnificent” he had ever seen. A reporter who was near him described the distant view of “riderless horses and scattering men, clouds of dirt from solid shot and exploding shells, long dark lines of infantry swaying to and fro, with columns of smoke rising from their muskets, red flashes and white puffs from the batteries—with the sun shining brightly on all this scene of tumult.”3
Nevertheless, McClellan would not aid them by further weakening his reserves. All he did was send Pleasonton’s cavalry and a few artillery batteries across the Middle Bridge at noon, to stage a small and ineffective diversion. Meanwhile Burnside was making no progress in his attempts to carry the Lower Bridge and threaten Lee’s right flank; and because he could not get past Toombs’s isolated brigade, the weakness of Lee’s southern flank could not be detected.
McClellan could not see enough of the battlefield to judge the state of things on Sumner’s front. He stood in the front yard of the Pry house, on the brink of the ridge that overlooked the Middle Bridge, watching the action through a telescope mounted on a staff. He saw the Confederate line in the Sunken Road collapse and blue-coated infantry surge into the cornfield beyond it—then recoil. But the gunsmoke that kept piling up around the Dunker Church and the East Woods obscured the exchange of charge and countercharge between Walker’s Confederate division and the Federals of Greene’s division.
Aides dispatched by Sumner and Franklin galloped out of the battle smoke to deliver reports and pleas for reinforcement and to offer conflicting advice about what McClellan ought to do next. Back into the smoke went officers from McClellan’s own staff, with responses to Sumner and Franklin, and renewed requests for information on the state of the field. It took anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half for a message to go one way; and since conditions on the battle line were constantly changing, by the time answers were received the generals were dealing with a different set of questions.
Then, between 12:30 and 2:00 PM, a series of such exchanges transformed McClellan’s conception of the course of battle. The exact sequence and timing of the messages cannot be reconstructed, but their drift can be read in the account given long afterward by James H. Wilson, then serving as a lieutenant on McClellan’s staff. Wilson was twenty-five, a member of West Point’s last prewar graduating class. He was trained as an engineer, like most of the academy’s best and brightest, but experience would prove he had military aptitude beyond his undergraduate specialty. He had already mastered the varied and demanding tasks of the general staff officer, which ranged from clerical work to acting as his general’s vicar, observing and reporting on distant events, not only delivering messages but interpreting their intent. As the commander’s representative, a staff lieutenant might well find himself giving orders to gray-haired generals of vast seniority—a role that required tact as well as intelligence and self-confidence. Young Wilson affected a mustache and chin beard that made him look older than he was.
While Richardson and French were driving the Rebels out of the Sunken Road, McClellan sent Wilson riding to Sumner’s headquarters with orders for him to hold the positions he had seized “at all hazards.” The orders, which took Wilson a half-hour to deliver, reflected McClellan’s uncertainty about the state of affairs on the right wing. To Wilson’s dismay, Sumner was unable to grasp the meaning of his orders. He seemed to think McClellan wanted him to attack. No matter what Wilson said, Sumner repeated his demand that Wilson inform McClellan that he could not attack, because his demoralized troops were liable to rout and might not be able to rally this side of the Antietam.4
Sumner’s confusion may have been the result of a disagreement that had erupted between himself and General Franklin, who was now on the field with both of his infantry divisions. Franklin’s reading of the battlefield led him to believe that the tide had turned sharply against the Confederates and that a prompt and strongly supported offensive on this part of the field might well produce a decisive result. The evidence of Confederate vulnerability must have been substantial, because Franklin had a well-earned reputation for slowness and caution in making and executing operational decisions. Franklin had sent a dispatch advocating an attack directly to McClellan, which probably reached the Pry house after Wilson’s departure. Sumner must have gotten it into his head that Wilson was bringing the attack order that Franklin had requested, and nothing that Wilson said could get past that assumption. So back went Wilson, to repeat Sumner’s words to McClellan.
Wilson was an extremely able and ambitious young officer, confident in his military judgment—justifiably so, according to General Grant, who would see him promoted to divisional, corps, and independent command before the war was done. He also read the situation here as one of opportunity rather than menace. On his way back to McClellan he accosted George Smalley, the Tribune reporter who had been covering the action on this part of the field, who agreed that the Rebel line here was reeling and that a strong push could break it.5 Wilson asked Smalley to ride to Hooker’s headquarters and beg Fighting Joe to resume command of the right wing—even if he had to do so from an ambulance. Hooker could replace the demoralized and incompetent Sumner, and his troops would rally to his return and support Franklin’s fresh troops in a climactic assault on the Rebel line. Wilson was risking a charge of mutiny, and Smalley of conspiracy, and both were ludicrously out of line. But they had seen the field, and their judgment supported the more substantial recommendation made by Franklin.
Franklin and Wilson had seen what McClellan could not: that the crisis that might have led to the rout of his right wing was past, and the victory in the Sunken Road had reversed the momentum of battle. The arrival of Franklin’s first division had checked the Rebel attack, which had driven Greene’s division back from the Dunker Church. The Confederates here would have to regroup before renewing their attacks, and while they did so, the battered brigades of I and XII Corps were reforming their ranks—already capable of holding their ground, which would free Smith’s division for offensive operations. In the meantime, Franklin’s second division had arrived, giving Franklin some twelve thousand fresh infantrymen for an offensive. Franklin had also seen, at close range, the triumphant conclusion to the attack on the Sunken Road, and marked the enthusiasm that carried Richardson’s men beyond the road in pursuit. Many of Richardson’s and French’s units were probably capable of joining an assault, their battle-weariness and losses offset by the elation of their sudden triumph and the sight of Rebel infantry fleeing the Sunken Road. However, that ardor had to be used before it cooled.
The situation now, just after 1:00 PM, was actually more promising than Franklin knew. For defensive reasons, McClellan had augmented the force fronting Sharpsburg. Pleasonton’s horse artillery proved inadequate to deal with the Confederate gunners, so McClellan sent part of the artillery from Sykes’s Division across, with a small brigade of Regular Army infantry under Lieutenant Colonel Robert Buchanan—not to attack, but to protect the guns. When complete, this would put a combined infantry/cavalry force of more than five thousand men in position to attack Sharpsburg directly. Meanwhile, down at the far southern end of the battlefield, IX Corps had finally forced its way across the Antietam, and was at last in position to throw its full weight against Lee’s southern flank.
BURNSIDE’S BRIDGE, 1:00–2:30 PM
McClellan had wanted Burnside’s diversion to draw off Confederate troops from the active front, and while Richardson and French fought for the Sunken Road, McClellan had been sending regular hurry-up messages to Burnside, to no appreciable effect. After Crook’s assault against the Lower Bridge misfired, a brigade from Sturgis’s Division made an attempt to cross the bridge. After it failed, the division commanders reverted to passivity, awaiting new orders, while Rodman’s division continued its sun-bedazzled search for the lost ford. Finally, shortly after noon, McClellan sent a senior staff officer, Colonel Sackett, with orders for Burnside to carry the crossing at all costs. Burnside passed the order to Cox, who summoned General Samuel Sturgis, who passed it to the commander of his second brigade, Edward Ferrero—a militia officer in peacetime who had made his fortune as the operator of fashionable dance clubs in New York.
Ferrero chose two regiments to make the assault, the Fifty-first Pennsylvania and Fifty-first New York, commanded respectively by Colonels John Hartranft and Robert Potter. Both were lawyers in civilian life, who became highly competent combat officers and would ultimately be promoted to divisional command, in Potter’s case over the head of Ferrero, his erstwhile brigadier. The stone bridge was a potential bottleneck and death trap, completely exposed to rifle fire from Confederates posted on the steep wooded hills overlooking the far side. Artillery could do nothing to suppress that fire. The only hope was for Hartranft to mass his regiment in column of fours and run like hell across the bridge, letting the dead and wounded fall as they would; then deploy into line and advance uphill while Potter’s regiment ran the gauntlet behind them to join the attack.
That is what they did. The Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers made their run across the “Bridge of Death,” took their losses, deployed in the brush, and began climbing the steep slope toward Toombs’s infantry.
Confederate resistance on the hilltop flurried and faded away. At almost the same moment that Hartranft attacked the bridge, General Rodman’s division finally discovered Snavely’s Ford, less than half a mile south of the bridge, and forced a crossing against the thin infantry screen Toombs had posted there. With his flank turned and three thousand Federals threatening to cut him off, Toombs had no choice but to fall back on D. R. Jones’s defense line. By 1:30 PM Burnside had three brigades across the river, with another three immediately available to cross the bridge and form up for a concerted drive against the Rebel lines south of Sharpsburg.
Thus, when Wilson returned to headquarters after his encounters with Sumner and Smalley, he found McClellan encouraged by the combination of Franklin’s dispatch and the good news from Burnside’s front. For the first time, and after unconscionable delay, McClellan’s infantry was in position to engage the entire length of the Confederate line: on the right the rallied elements of I and XII Corps held the North and East woods, and Richardson and French the Sunken Road, with VI Corps in reserve. Pleasonton’s cavalry, backed by artillery and Buchanan’s Regulars from V Corps, were established across the Middle Bridge, opening the approach for an attack into Sharpsburg; and now IX Corps was across the Lower Bridge, and preparing to advance against the southern, or right, flank of Lee’s position, which was “in the air”—open to a sweep around its far southern end.
Back went Wilson with new orders for Sumner, to let Franklin attack and give him all the support his other commands could manage. Burnside was also ordered to press the attack on the other end of the line, and McClellan promised to support his attack by a strong demonstration against Sharpsburg by Pleasonton and Sykes.
Wilson rode back to Sumner in record time—but Old Bull Head was immovable. He could not see the field as Franklin saw it, could not see that I and XII Corps units were rallying and reforming, could not see the significance of the Confederate break at the Sunken Road. All he could see was Sedgwick’s ruin, in which he had been physically immersed, an experience so overwhelming that it seemed to him to have wrecked the entire right wing. He told Wilson to go back and tell McClellan, “I have no command . . . my command, Banks’ command and Hooker’s command are all cut up and demoralized.” Franklin’s corps was the only unit capable of self-defense, and it had to be reserved as the right wing’s last resort.
Wilson would carry this message back to McClellan, and while he was in transit there would be no attack. By now it was well after 2:00 PM. Richardson’s and French’s men had pulled back from the Sunken Road to positions more sheltered from artillery fire, rested a bit, and resupplied with ammunition. Their physical strength and armament improved, but the wild energy that might have carried them up the slope to Sharpsburg had lapsed with the sudden relief from battle stress. On the Confederate side the chaos produced by the rout from the Sunken Road was steadily diminishing. The routed troops were rallying and reforming their ranks. Their morale was resilient enough that officers were able to improvise new formations using individuals from different units. The Federals still enjoyed a powerful advantage in numbers, but the intangible elements that had given the Union army the opportunity for a decisive stroke were steadily dissipating while its commanders debated their course of action.
McClellan’s response to Wilson’s latest report was characteristic. Instead of reaffirming the order to attack, he reconsidered the impulse that had led him to issue it. Perhaps Sumner was right and Franklin mistaken. The core of his military doctrine was to ensure against the possibility of defeat before assuming the risks inherent in attempting to win a victory. He mistrusted the chaos and fluidity of battle, in which events could take uncontrolled direction.6 He believed the issue was still very much in doubt. His overestimate of Lee’s numbers made it plausible to fear a heavy counterattack against the Union right wing, which, if Sumner was correct, might drive half the army from the field in abject rout. McClellan decided to ride to Sumner’s headquarters and judge for himself the feasibility of a new attack on that front. His ultimate decision was foreshadowed by the fact that he left his headquarters without giving orders to Pleasonton, Sykes, or Porter to prepare supporting attacks in the Middle Bridge sector. He sent no additional orders or information to Burnside, whose troops under Cox’s command were slowly assembling in their hard-won bridgehead and preparing—still preparing—to advance.
LEE’S HEADQUARTERS, NOON–2:30 PM
However erroneous his estimate of Lee’s capabilities, McClellan was accurate in assessing his opponent’s intentions. Lee’s response to the crisis, like McClellan’s, was characteristic. He embraced the chaos and fluidity of battle, confident in his own ability to read the play of forces, and in the ability of his corps and division commanders to execute his orders with initiative, energy, and good judgment. He also believed that his soldiers were markedly superior to those of the enemy in both combat skills and morale. As he rode north to confer with General Jackson, he passed one of those improvised formations composed of men who had been rallied after being separated from their home units. He hailed them, urging them to prove “that the stragglers of the Army of Northern Virginia, arebetter than the best troops of the enemy.” He may have intended the speech as a buck-me-up for the troops, but his subsequent actions suggest that he believed what he said.7
Lee had sent the preponderance of his infantry strength to Jackson’s front. With his center thin to breaking and his right threatened, the obvious next move was to borrow what force Jackson could spare to buttress Longstreet’s line facing the Sunken Road and D. R. Jones’s at the Middle Bridge. Instead, Lee would use his strongest concentration of force to strike what he deemed the weakest part of the Federal line, the flank held by the defeated troops of I and XII Corps. At some time between 1:30 and 2:00 PM—while Lieutenant Wilson was riding back and forth between McClellan and Sumner—Lee met with Jackson and ordered him to pull together a striking force and swing it wide to the north in an attempt to either turn McClellan’s right flank or break it by assault.
Lee’s plan seems quixotic. Its likelihood of success was slim, given the large disparity of numbers on this part of the field. For his assault force, Jackson would have fewer than ten thousand men of all arms. The task of turning or smashing the Federal flank was assigned to Jeb Stuart, who would lead a mixed force of something over four thousand cavalry, infantry, and guns—the cavalry predominating, which meant the force had less firepower than the equivalent number of infantry. Jackson would support Stuart with a column of five thousand infantry, gathered in the West Woods. When Stuart was in position to attack, Jackson would order his infantry forward, and the sound of their rifles would be Stuart’s cue to assault. Jackson was well aware that the Federals in his front represented elements of three army corps, and that even with their numbers reduced by combat losses they significantly outnumbered his own available force. The rallied elements of I and XII had between ten thousand and twelve thousand infantry in line, with an ample supply of artillery; and they were backed by Smith’s Division of VI Corps, with six thousand fresh men. However, like Lee, Jackson assumed that these troops had been demoralized by the repulse of their attack and by the counterattacks that had driven them back to their start lines. That idea seems to have been widespread among the Confederate high command. At about the time that Jackson was assembling his force, Longstreet met with General John Walker to propose an attack by Walker’s Division against the Federal line in the East Woods. He called it off when informed of Lee’s decision to make the attack on Jackson’s front, but he clearly shared Lee’s sense that the Federals were badly shaken and that a sudden stroke might reverse the momentum of the fight.
There was more to this belief than the legendary Sothron sense of superiority to all things Yankee. In both the Seven Days and Second Bull Run campaigns, Lee’s army had succeeded in attacking a Federal army, superior in numbers and materiel, and driving it from the field in full and even abject retreat. At South Mountain it had held at bay a vastly superior force, then retreated in good order. On this day, it had held its lines against heavy assaults by an army that outnumbered it two to one. On the right a single brigade had held off an army corps for three hours. And on the north, in Jackson’s sector, it had driven the Federal right wing back to its start line. Though D. H. Hill’s and R. H. Anderson’s Divisions had been driven from the Sunken Road, they had apparently fought the Yankees to a standstill—at least, they were not attempting to advance from the captured position. That hesitancy was itself proof of a kind that Federal troops lacked the skill, the leadership, and the morale to make the kind of attacks that won battles. Confederate generals understood that part of that failure could be blamed on the caution, perhaps the faintheartedness, of Federal generals. But it was not unreasonable to think that perhaps that caution reflected the generals’ lack of confidence in their own troops. Lincoln certainly thought McClellan mistrusted the quality of his force. One of the strongest criticisms he would level at McClellan was that by failing to demand that his army march and fight as hard as the Rebels, he implied a belief that his men as menwere inferior to their enemies.8
Although Lee’s plan for Jackson’s flank attack was daring, it was not irrational. At the very least, Jackson’s attack might serve to distract the Federal command, force it to divert attention and resources to the northern flank, and thereby weaken or forestall an attack against Sharpsburg. Lee also anticipated the arrival of A. P. Hill’s Light Division, which had been on the march from Harpers Ferry since 6:30 AM. An attack by Jackson at the northern end of the line would divert strength and attention away from Hill’s line of approach.
Finally—if Jackson did no more than mount a serious threat to the safety of the Federal wing, his attack might so unhinge McClellan that he would pull his army back across the Antietam. The flank attack by Longstreet and Jackson at Gaines’ Mill at the start of the Seven Days had broken McClellan’s will to stand and fight and started him on the long retreat to Harrison’s Landing. Jackson’s flank march against Pope, and Longstreet’s flank attack at Second Bull Run, had done the same to Pope’s army. It would be success enough if the threat of a similar strike here did no more than force McClellan to abandon the attack. Lee’s army could then regroup and resupply, and consider whether to retreat in safety or continue the campaign. If McClellan could be frightened as badly as he had been on the Peninsula, he might even retreat behind the mountains, and that would enable Lee to achieve the goal of his campaign: a durable position for his army in western Maryland from which to menace and raid the cities and railroads of Pennsylvania.
At 2:30 PM, Lee’s confidence was augmented by the appearance at his headquarters of Major General A. P. Hill, who had ridden in advance of his column to report that four of his five brigades were now less than two hours from the field. When they arrived Lee would be able to strike at both ends of the Federal line.
MCCLELLAN’S HEADQUARTERS, 2:00–4:00 PM
While Jackson was gathering his assault force and giving Stuart his orders, McClellan had ridden to Sumner’s headquarters to look at the ground and the troops and make his choice between Franklin’s urging to attack and Sumner’s insistence that his wing could do little more than defend itself. His ride to the front would have taken him through the backwash of the Sunken Road assaults and the fighting around the East Woods, past windrows of dead shot down in ranks, past hundreds of his wounded, dead, and dying soldiers, past stragglers and disorganized gangs of men from broken units—evidence supportive of Sumner’s brief. If Franklin was right, here was a chance to win a substantial, perhaps decisive, tactical victory. But were the odds good enough to justify the risks involved, when if Sumner was correct a repulse might wreck most of four army corps? McClellan’s strategy assumed that the Army of the Potomac, with himself in command, was the only power in the land capable of saving the Republic from the twin menaces of secession and Radicalism. It was (in his view) irresponsible to risk the army’s safety and his own reputation on the wild chances of a chaotic combat like this one.
By the time he reached Sumner’s headquarters, between 2:30 and 3:00 PM, McClellan’s interest in the offensive had cooled. As Franklin recalled it, the gist of their discussion was that the right wing had probably done all it could, and McClellan “was afraid to risk the day by an attack there on the right at that time.” Franklin loyally deferred to his leader’s judgment, but he was clearly disappointed. McClellan backed his judgment by ordering two brigades from his carefully hoarded infantry reserve to march to Sumner’s support. Then he rode back to his headquarters, arriving there between 3:30 and 4:00 PM, in time to face a new crisis.9
BURNSIDE’S FIGHT, 3:00–5:30 PM
In McClellan’s absence, IX Corps had been making slow progress in carrying out his order to press the attack against the Confederate line south of Sharpsburg. After Rodman’s and Sturgis’s divisions had secured the crossings at Snavely’s Ford and the Lower Bridge, it had taken nearly two hours for the other two divisions, with their artillery, to cross the single span of the bridge and deploy in line of battle facing northwest. In judging the efficiency of this performance it should be noted that IX Corps divisions contained two brigades each, rather than three; yet it took them twice as long to deploy as Sumner’s three divisions, which were larger and had more, and more difficult, ground to cover when they went into action.
Nevertheless, despite all the delays and the lost opportunities of the daylong struggle, it was still possible for the Union army to achieve a tactically decisive breakthrough south of Sharpsburg and into the town itself. The meat-grinder fighting north of the town had absorbed and used up the offensive capacity of three-quarters of Lee’s available force—twenty-five thousand of the thirty-five thousand with which he had begun the day’s fighting. What remained of Jackson’s offensive capability was already committed to the attempt to turn McClellan’s northern flank. To defend the line from the front of Sharpsburg south to the junction of the Harpers Ferry and Boteler’s Ford roads, all that remained were between three and four thousand infantry, mostly from David R. Jones’s Division. Three small brigades held the line that straddled the Boonsboro Road, which ran up to Sharpsburg from the Middle Bridge. The strongpoint here was Cemetery Hill, southeast of the town. The brigades of Drayton and Kemper extended this line along the crest of the plateau south of Sharpsburg for perhaps six hundred yards. Beyond Kemper’s right flank the next six hundred yards of the line was held by detached regiments and batteries, but the Federal approach to this weak defense was obstructed by Toombs’s Brigade, skirmishing as it withdrew after its defense of the Lower Bridge. The only infantry reinforcements Jones could hope to receive would come from A. P. Hill’s Light Division, which at 3:00 PM was still nearly an hour and a half away. To compensate for the lack of infantry, Lee once again deployed his highly mobile field artillery. S. D. Lee’s gunners had already fought in support of the northern flank around Dunker Church and the Sunken Road offensive. Now he was sent with his twelve surviving guns to the extreme southern flank of the army, to hold the line beyond Kemper’s flank with artillery unsupported by infantry.
Against this attenuated and improvised defense, the Federals could immediately deploy between 9,500 and 10,000 infantry and more than 4,000 cavalry, with ample artillery support. Burnside and Cox would advance uphill against the Confederates defending the Boteler Ford road and the southeast side of Sharpsburg, with the divisions of Rodman and Willcox, each augmented by a brigade of the Kanawha Division as a reserve. Behind this array Sturgis’s division formed a corps reserve of 2,500–3,000 men, still resting and resupplying with ammunition after its storming of the bridge. Willcox would make the main attack toward Sharpsburg and Cemetery Hill, with Rodman advancing in concert to protect his left flank.
As Willcox advanced, his right would come in contact with the forces that McClellan had earlier sent across the Middle Bridge: Buchanan’s small brigade of Regular infantry and Pleasonton’s 4,500 cavalrymen. The attack here would have the support not only of divisional artillery but of the heavy guns east of the Antietam, which could hit the Rebels in front of Sharpsburg with line-of-sight fire over what was, for them, short range. However, the potential assault force on this front was limited to Buchanan’s Brigade of fewer than 2,300 infantry. Cavalry was considered to be unsuited for the kind of frontal attack that would be required, and McClellan had depleted the V Corps infantry reserve when he ordered 2,000 men under General Morrell to go to Sumner’s aid. McClellan still had 4,000 infantry east of Antietam Creek, but he would be extremely reluctant to commit this last reserve to action.10
Nevertheless, even without that last 4,000, Union forces outnumbered Confederates in this sector by nearly three to one. However, there was no commanding intelligence on the scene willing or able to put all of those forces into play. McClellan had not yet returned from his conference with Sumner and Franklin, and he had left no instructions allowing, let alone commanding, Porter to send any part of V Corps to Burnside’s support. Like Hooker and Mansfield, Sumner and Greene, French and Richardson, Burnside and Cox would conduct their operations without physical support or command guidance from army headquarters.
At 3:00 PM IX Corps’ attack swept into the open, Willcox’s Division in advance and Rodman’s in echelon behind it. They could be seen from McClellan’s headquarters at the Pry house, and the staff officers and reporters admired the magnificent spectacle of rows and rows of infantry in line of battle, the sun glinting on their brass and steel, advancing steadily under brilliant flags against D. R. Jones’s Division on the Sharpsburg plateau.
Rodman had the dual task of supporting Willcox and guarding the IX Corps left flank, a difficult assignment requiring a tactical expertise that he lacked. Isaac Peace Rodman had been a merchant and political leader before the war—a Quaker, whose decision to fight for his country had been spiritually wrenching. He of course had no prewar militia experience, but as a leading citizen he was able to recruit a regiment and earn its colonelcy. His effective service with Burnside in the North Carolina campaign earned him promotion to brigadier general. However, his only experience of divisional command had come three days earlier in the engagement at South Mountain. When he received his orders, IX Corps headquarters assumed that the primary threat to the corps flank would come from the reserves Lee was supposed to have behind Sharpsburg. Any Confederate counterattack would therefore be launched from the line Willcox was approaching head-on. Rodman sent all of his First Brigade and half of his Second to attack the Confederate troops on Willcox’s left—the Second threatening the line held by the brigades of Toombs and Kemper, while the First Brigade, commanded by Colonel Fairchild, slanted off to the right, to attack Drayton’s Brigade defending the south side of Sharpsburg.
Rodman detailed only two regiments to watch the left (southern) flank and posted them off to the left and well behind his advancing battle lines. One of these was the Sixteenth Connecticut, a large rookie regiment whose numbers made them comparable in strength to two worn-down veteran regiments. The other was the Fourth Rhode Island, a long-serving outfit that had had little experience of major combat. They were not posted in defensible terrain, had no special orders, and were not assigned an experienced senior officer to direct their operations. They were just lined up facing west toward the Boteler’s Ford road, with their flanks in the air: 940 green infantrymen watching the rising dust that concealed the 2,500 veteran soldiers of A. P. Hill’s Light Division, footsore from their forced march but possessing high morale and incomparable battle experience.
Officers manning the signal station above McClellan’s headquarters also noticed the heavy cloud of dust on the Boteler’s Ford road, which indicated that Confederate reinforcements from Harpers Ferry were approaching the battlefield. Word was sent to Rodman by way of McClellan, Burnside, and Cox to guard against an attack by forces moving east via the Boteler’s Ford road. The message never reached Rodman.11
In the meantime, Willcox’s men went into action. His right flank brigade, under Colonel Christ, moved frontally against the strong Confederate position on Cemetery Hill. The Rebel gunners there were being blasted by the long-range guns from across the Antietam, but they reserved their fire for infantry and imposed heavy losses. Willcox’s other brigade charged on the left and outflanked the Cemetery Hill position, while Lieutenant Colonel Buchanan, on his own initiative, sent part of his Regular brigade forward on Christ’s right. There was not enough Confederate infantry here in Evans’s and Jenkins’s Brigades to hold the line against these multiple thrusts. The guns were pulled off Cemetery Hill back into the streets of Sharpsburg. Captain Hiram Dryer of the Regulars was able to get into the east end of town, and he came out again to report that the Rebels here had barely two regiments and a battery capable of defending the critical center of the Confederate position. Even without calling on the reserves from across the Antietam, with Buchanan’s infantry and Pleasonton’s cavalry there were almost five thousand additional troops just behind the battle front, and the rest of Sykes’s division was poised at the bridge. If these had joined the attack they could have seized the town, but neither Pleasonton nor Sykes would move without orders from Porter or McClellan.12
At about this same time—that is, 4:00 PM—Fairchild’s brigade of Rodman’s division charged the line held by Drayton’s Brigade south of Sharpsburg, broke it, and turned north to threaten the town from the south side. The Confederate line in front of Sharpsburg was cracking, the streets of the little town were clogged with disorganized troops, with wagons and artillery trying to escape entrapment. Some of Fairchild’s men got in among the buildings on the south side of town and began shooting up the retreat.
Meanwhile the situation of Rodman’s other brigade, commanded by Colonel Harland, was growing problematic. To protect the left flank of Fairchild’s attacking column, two regiments of Harland’s brigade had advanced against the part of the Confederate line held by Kemper and Toombs, with Ewing’s brigade from the Kanawha Division in support. Fairchild’s brigade was making its successful assault on Drayton, and Harland’s lead regiments were already engaged with Toombs and Kemper, when Rodman became aware that Confederate units of undetermined size were not only approaching from the west on the Boteler Road but preparing to swing around and strike his open left flank. His units were not well positioned to meet the threat, with only two regiments posted on the flank and his entire reserve following Harland’s line of attack. Rodman had to alert his flank guard, then get hold of Ewing and tell him to redirect his advance south and west. He was galloping across the fields to do just that when a Rebel sharpshooter drilled him through the chest. He was carried from the field, mortally wounded, and the division was left effectively leaderless.
A. P. HILL’S FLANK ATTACK
A. P. Hill was prepared to strike as soon as his vanguard reached the battlefield. At thirty-seven, Hill had earned the respect and confidence of both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He had graduated West Point in 1847, a year after McClellan—the two had been rivals for the hand of Mary Ellen Marcy, and McClellan had won. “Little Powell” was forty-seven, below average height, heavily bearded—a veteran of the Mexican and Seminole wars who had resigned an active commission in 1861 to serve the Confederacy. He won promotion to the rank of major general and division command early in the Peninsula Campaign, and had proved to be one of the best division commanders in the army. He had named his present command the Light Division, to borrow the aura and the élan of the famed British light infantry division that had fought in the Napoleonic Wars. Technically his brigades were not “light infantry,” which in European armies were specially armed and trained for skirmishing and scouting. But they lived up to their name by making long marches with more than usual speed, by the efficiency and quickness with which they maneuvered on the battlefield, and by the power with which they made their assaults.
Jackson considered Hill’s the best of his divisions, and when possible reserved them for the most vital and arduous missions. Jackson had marched the division hard during his advance on Harpers Ferry, because he planned to use it for his final assault. He had left Hill behind, partly to rest his command, but also because he trusted Hill to wind up affairs at Harpers Ferry and bring his division north with all possible speed, and have it ready for instant action.
Hill did not disappoint Jackson. He had brought his command up from Harpers Ferry by a sixteen-mile march that began at 6:30 AM, pushing the pace as hard as he could in the heavy heat and glaring sun, balancing the need for speed against the necessity of preserving his men’s strength. He had ridden ahead to confer with Lee at 2:30 PM and had been apprised of the army’s precarious position and of the powerful Federal attack that was building against the southern end of the line. He was therefore quick to recognize the alignment of the Federal forces attacking Jones’s Division, and to exploit the opportunity offered by their weakly defended southern flank.
Hill sent his first brigade into action as soon as it reached the junction of the Boteler’s Ford and Harpers Ferry roads, at 4:20 PM. This was Gregg’s Brigade of South Carolina infantry, and at seven to eight hundred men it was the largest in the division. Gregg’s Regiments deployed rapidly on a roll of higher ground. Half of them advanced against the left-most elements of Harland’s brigade, the IX Corps unit that was advancing toward the Rebel line south of Sharpsburg. The other half swept past Harland’s flanks to attack the hapless rookies of the Sixteenth Connecticut. Gregg’s veteran infantry took advantage of the stone walls that separated the cornfields and orchards on this part of the field to work their way around and behind the rookies’ west-facing firing line.
The rookies were brave enough to stand and fire, checking Gregg’s first onset. But the regiment’s training had been negligible, and when their officers tried to shift their alignment to counter Gregg’s attempt to flank them the troops became confused and disordered. Unable to maneuver, and with bullets hitting them from front and flank, they broke and ran for the rear. Behind them the inexperienced Fourth Rhode Island was also thrown into confusion by Gregg’s attack. In the smoke and confusion its officers were uncertain whether the troops in front were friend or foe—many of Gregg’s men were wearing blue uniforms looted from the stores at Harpers Ferry. The Fourth Rhode Island broke as well, and the flank of Rodman’s division was compromised.13
The rest of A. P. Hill’s units deployed with speed and efficiency. The brigades of Branch and Archer swept past Gregg’s left, then turned north to strike the flank of Harland’s Brigade, which had been pressing the attack against the line held by Toombs and Kemper. When Harland’s men pulled back, they exposed the flank and rear of Fairchild’s Brigade to infantry attack. Fairchild’s units had suffered 63 percent casualties in their attack on Drayton, so they had no choice but to retreat, and when they did they uncovered the left flank of Willcox’s division.
The situation south and east of Sharpsburg was now in flux. Union infantry in this sector still outnumbered the Confederates, but the momentum had shifted from IX Corps to the Light Division. Confederate infantry were able to press their attack against superior numbers because—with IX Corps batteries pulling back or masked by retreating troops—they now enjoyed a local superiority in artillery firepower, thanks again to the guns Lee had shifted to support his weakened flank. The mobility of Lee’s artillery reserve was proving an effective counter for those long-range but immobile heavy guns on which McClellan relied. In addition, the Federals’ heavy guns were running so low on ammunition that they had to cease their supporting fires for Willcox’s infantry in front of Sharpsburg.
General Cox rode forward to take charge in this crisis. He directed Ewing’s brigade, which had been Rodman’s reserve, to confront the Rebel brigades (Pender and Archer) that had broken Harland’s Brigade. In the meantime Pender’s and Brockenbrough’s Brigades of the Light Division had peeled off to Gregg’s right, and gone into line facing north against the flank and rear of Ewing’s Brigade. Behind Ewing, there were only scattered regiments and rallied remnants to resist a flank attack—and Sturgis’s two brigades back by the bridge, still somehow unready to take the field. By 5:00 PM, then, Cox had no choice but to recall Willcox from the attack on Sharpsburg and pull everyone back to the Lower Bridge.
MCCLELLAN’S HEADQUARTERS, 4:00–5:30 PM
The emergency on Burnside’s flank was not immediately registered at army headquarters. McClellan had returned to the Pry house at about 4:00 PM, after the conference with Sumner and Franklin, and was confronted by what had seemed to be the chief crisis of the day’s action.14
Behind him, a crescendo of artillery fire from the north announced that Jackson was assailing the right flank of his army. This seemed to confirm Sumner’s fears of a powerful Rebel counterattack against his supposedly shattered divisions, and to justify his own decision to hold VI Corps on the defensive and dispatch two of Morrell’s V Corps brigades for additional support. At the same time, McClellan received warning of A. P. Hill’s approach from the observers in his high signal station.
McClellan could not know that the huge uproar of artillery on his right flank was almost entirely produced by his own gunners. As soon as the heads of Stuart’s attack columns emerged from the woods below Nicodemus Hill, I Corps artillery hit them with a heavy barrage of shell fire. It did not take long for Stuart and Jackson to conclude that Federal troops on this flank had rallied and were standing firm. Jackson called off the flank attack, and, because his troop strength was so reduced by casualties, he also decided to pull Stuart’s command off Nicodemus Hill and tie it in with his line in the West Woods. This was a dubious move: if the Federals discovered it and decided to seize the Hill, the whole northern flank would be compromised. Federal artillery firing from Nicodemus Hill could sweep the left flank and rear of Jackson’s line and force him to retreat. Luckily for Jackson, the Union troops stayed on the defensive.
While the noise of Jackson’s aborted attack still sounded from the right, observations from the Pry house yard indicated that Burnside’s assault was succeeding. Willcox’s Division and Fairchild’s Brigade could be seen sweeping forward against the Confederate line. At about this same time Captain Dryer arrived at headquarters with his report that the Rebels had hardly any organized forces left to defend the town of Sharpsburg, and to suggest that an immediate attack in force would break the Rebel line.15
For the first time that day, McClellan was in the right position from which to act directly upon the battlefield. It appeared the moment had come to strike a decisive blow, and McClellan seemed ready to seize it. The crucial orders came from Fitz-John Porter, presumably, though not certainly, at McClellan’s behest. At 5:00 PM Porter informed General Sykes that “Burnside is driving the enemy” and instructed Sykes to order Buchanan’s Regulars to join the assault and also “drive them.” If successful, the joint attack by Willcox and Buchanan would give Union troops possession of Sharpsburg, the nexus of the roads and lanes that linked the wings of Lee’s army to the center. It would create a breach in the center of Lee’s line, exposing his artillery reserve and trains to destruction, threatening his army’s line of retreat to the Shepherdstown Ford.16
However, even as he licensed the offensive, McClellan withheld the force that would have made its success certain. Porter would commit only the small brigade already in position across the Middle Bridge. He did not release the rest of Sykes’s Division or the remaining brigade of Morrell’s Division, which now constituted the army’s general reserve.
A short time later the question of an attack by Sykes became moot. Before Porter’s order could be executed, headquarters got word of A. P. Hill’s onset and the sudden emergency on IX Corps’ front. The effects of Hill’s assault could be observed from the Pry house yard—blue infantry falling back from the Confederate line along the high ground south of Sharpsburg, the slippage proceeding from left to right as the effect of Hill’s flank attack was felt down the line. There was no word from Sumner or Franklin about the outcome of the flank attack Stuart had attempted. The tactical situation, as McClellan perceived it, was fluid and confusing. It seemed clear that Lee had mounted a major strike against Burnside’s flank, and perhaps against I Corps as well. But Franklin’s advice, along with Dryer’s testimony, suggested that Lee had weakened other parts of his line to do so. Thus even with much of IX Corps apparently in retreat, McClellan still had the option of launching an attack against Sharpsburg, to break or threaten the “hinge” on which Hill’s advance swung—the juncture between Hill’s left and Lee’s center. Sykes had one brigade of 2,300 men already in action there, and another of similar strength in reserve—a potential attack force of 4,500 infantry for the heavy work of taking the town, with Pleasonton’s 4,500 cavalry to support the flanks.
But to mount such an attack at such a moment was extremely risky. Since McClellan had credited Lee with nearly double his actual strength, he thought it likely that the Confederates still possessed a substantial reserve. He probably believed A. P. Hill’s column was twice its actual strength. How else explain the fact that, after suffering heavy losses, Lee was mounting simultaneous offenses against both Federal flanks? McClellan had already rejected Franklin’s assertion that Lee’s north-facing line was weakened and vulnerable to attack. The weakness Dryer had seen on the Sharpsburg front might have been merely a temporary disorder among front-line troops, easily remedied by Lee’s supposed reserve. In that case, with much of IX Corps disorganized by retreat, a severe check to a new offensive—and all offensives so far had been severely checked—followed by a Rebel counterattack out of Sharpsburg, might unhinge the whole center of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan’s hoarded infantry reserve had been largely depleted. Of the forty-eight thousand men he had held in reserve that morning, only five thousand men in two V Corps brigades, one from Sykes’s Division and one from Morrell’s, remained on the heights above the Middle Bridge. Morell’s other two brigades had been ordered to reinforce Sumner and were half a mile down the road.
The safer alternative was to stand on the defensive, rally IX Corps, and use the remaining reserves to hold their ground against the counterattacks apparently developing against both of the army’s flanks. The decision was made after a brief exchange between McClellan and Porter. Reporter George Smalley, who was on the scene, thought McClellan’s face grew “darker with anxious thought” as he glanced at Sykes’s infantry drawn up below the Pry house before turning to Porter. In response to the question implied in that glance, “Porter slowly shakes his head, and one may believe that the same thought is passing through the minds of both generals. . . . ‘They [V Corps] are the only reserves of the army. They cannot be spared.’ ” However, General George Sykes, the usually stolid commander of Porter’s Regular Army division, remembered Porter’s statement as stronger, defining the crisis in much larger, almost apocalyptic terms: “Remember, General . . . I command the last reserve of the last Army of the Republic.” McClellan then rejected the idea of using his reserves in an assault against Sharpsburg. Instead he recalled the two brigades of V Corps that had been sent to aid Sumner, to reinforce his center. McClellan also sent word to Burnside that he “must hold his ground till dark at any cost,” but that no infantry could be spared from the reserve to reinforce him.17
McClellan’s response to this final crisis has been the subject of controversy, among his contemporaries and with historians as well. The decisions he made are clear enough. What is at issue is the reasoning behind those decisions, and the motives that shaped them. These have significance beyond their obvious effects on the tactical conduct of the battle, because they raise questions about McClellan’s character and state of mind, and about his larger strategic goals—that is, his way of conceiving the relationship between his military struggle with secession and his political struggle to wrench control of civil and military policy from Lincoln, Stanton, and the Radicals.
Smalley would seem to be a more reliable witness than Sykes. His account was written just after the battle and published in the Tribune two days later. In contrast, Sykes’s recollection was offered more than twenty years later, in 1885, in an interview with editors preparing an article on the battle for Century magazine. Yet Sykes’s version has been persuasive to many modern historians, because it so accurately reflects McClellan’s way of thinking, and the state of mind prevailing inside the defensive bubble maintained by his aides, his staff, and his inner circle of confidants. But either formulation was profoundly out of touch with reality. V Corps was hardly the last reserve of McClellan’s army—not with VI Corps uncommitted and two fresh divisions marching up to join the army that evening. Moreover, McClellan’s was hardly the “last army of the Republic.” Aside from the armies of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and the smaller field armies in Louisiana and Missouri, there were two army corps and a host of recruits in the Washington fortifications. There was only one perspective from which the Army of the Potomac could be called “the last army of the Republic”: the perspective unique to McClellan and his circle of advisers and confidants. These not only considered the Young Napoleon the one man capable of saving the nation from both secession and Radicalism, but they saw his army as the only institution strong and loyal enough to support the general’s campaign to control the administration. From that perspective, any significant check to the Army of the Potomac might indeed have apocalyptic consequences, imperiling the survival of the Republic.
That was the possibility that weighed on McClellan and Porter as they mounted their horses and rode off to the left to find Burnside and get his assessment of the crisis on his front. Before they had ridden very far they were met by a messenger from Burnside. According to McClellan, Burnside said that if he were not supported his corps might be driven back across the Antietam; Burnside would later deny making so dire a prediction. Neither man’s word can be trusted implicitly, however, since they had been increasingly at odds with one another since McClellan deprived Burnside of his wing command. By the time they wrote their official reports, each was defending himself against accusations by the other. Even so, Burnside must have given a grim report of his situation and made a strong plea for reinforcement. According to Smalley, who rode along with McClellan and Porter, McClellan told Burnside’s courier that the army’s resources were exhausted: “I can do nothing more. I have no infantry.” As the courier started away, McClellan recalled him. McClellan had already ordered Burnside to hold his ground “at all costs.” He now reinforced that command with an emotional injunction: “Tell [Burnside] if he cannot hold his ground, then [he must hold] the bridge, to the last man!—always the bridge! If the bridge is lost, all is lost.”18
It is hard to imagine what possible debacle on IX Corps’ front could have led to a defeat of “all is lost” dimensions. Did McClellan fear a massive attack against his southern flank and center, like the flank attack of Longstreet’s Corps at Second Bull Run that drove Pope’s army in ruin from the field? Setting aside the fact that Lee had nothing like the troop strength with which McClellan credited him, before A. P. Hill’s attack could reach the Federals’ vital center east of the creek it would have to fight its way through the woods and hillocks that lay between the rim of the Sharpsburg plateau and the Lower Bridge—terrain well suited to defense. Beyond these positions was the creek itself, which could only be crossed at two points, the Lower Bridge and Snavely’s Ford. Captain Dryer’s report showed there was no danger of a Confederate attack via the Middle Bridge. Unless Burnside’s corps simply and almost instantly dissolved, there was no conceivable danger to McClellan’s core position east of the Antietam. However, if Burnside’s corps, like the corps of Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner, was substantially wrecked, McClellan might well be compelled to pull all his troops back across the Antietam, or even (at the worst) retreat behind the shield of South Mountain. Either of those outcomes would count as a defeat, so damaging to McClellan’s prestige that his enemies might well succeed in removing him from command. Since he was the only man who could save the Republic, all would then indeed be lost.
In similar circumstances, during the Seven Days, the prospect of personal and political ruin had driven McClellan to a kind of hysteria, expressed in the strident and accusatory telegrams he dispatched to Washington. It is conceivable that his emotional state here was similarly labile. On the other hand, both before and immediately following this outburst, McClellan displayed coolness and self-possession. After dismissing Burnside’s courier and turning his horse back toward headquarters, he almost immediately recovered his aplomb. This suggests that McClellan’s “all is lost” outcry was neither a sincere response to a crisis nor a display of emotional imbalance, but rather a histrionic display, an act played out for calculated effect on his officers and men, and on reporter George Smalley. By exaggerating the dimensions of the crisis he also magnified his own heroic stature in meeting that crisis, demanding of weaker men the most desperate of defenses, and inspiring them to achieve it. On a more mundane level, he would also have been dramatizing the genuineness of his belief that the enemy before him was indeed in great if not superior strength. This was the justification for all of the tactical decisions he had made so far, and it established the context in which the next decisions would be made.
BY THE TIME HE reached the Pry house, at about 5:30 PM, it was clear that IX Corps was not in danger of destruction. As the gunfire sputtered and died out, McClellan continued on to Franklin’s headquarters to assess the state of things on his right flank. There he learned that Jackson’s and Stuart’s counterattack against the Union right had been easily repulsed. He also found that Franklin was still firmly convinced that Lee’s army was shaken and vulnerable to a well-planned offensive. Franklin proposed using the VI Corps in a dawn attack to seize Nicodemus Hill, with the rallied elements of I and XII Corps advancing in support. Once he had planted artillery on that high ground he could sweep the Confederates’ northern line with fire, enabling a general offensive against Lee’s flank.
Burnside Bridge, as Confederate defenders saw it (NATIONAL PARK SERVICE)
The opportunity here was better than Franklin knew. At the time of his conference with McClellan, Nicodemus Hill was completely undefended. The position was critical to both attack and defense on the northern end of the battlefront. From the hill, Confederate artillery had raked Union troops attacking the West Woods. Jackson had pulled Stuart’s command off the hill only after his failed flanking maneuver, because his divisions were so thinned by their losses that they could not extend their lines to include the hill. By evening there were no Confederate troops on Nicodemus Hill, and there was little Jackson could do about it. After dark he had Stuart send out a company-size reconnaissance, which found that the Federals had not yet seized the position. Fifty men were then left to defend a position that had been held at dawn by some 5,500 cavalry, infantry, and gunners.
It was unfortunate, and utterly characteristic of McClellan’s command system, that Franklin did not order a reconnaissance to Nicodemus Hill. If he had, he could have accomplished the first stage of his planned assault without firing a shot. But Franklin had already shown more than his usual energy and aggressiveness by urging McClellan to attack in the morning. His views altered McClellan’s understanding of the day’s events. Burnside’s rout and Sumner’s dire dispatches suggested that the army had come perilously close to defeat—but those crises had apparently passed. Franklin’s advice suggested that the enemy had also been heavily damaged, and that the balance of results was actually favorable to the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan felt encouraged enough to give tentative approval to Franklin’s plan of attack before returning to his own headquarters at Keedysville for the night. However, he had much to think about before committing his battered army to a renewed offensive on September 18. Burnside’s and Hooker’s corps, and Sedgwick’s division, had been driven from the field—did they have the morale to rally and throw themselves into an assault the very next day? Richardson’s and French’s divisions had been victorious, but their losses had been fearful—did they have the strength and will to make another such attack? He had four relatively fresh veteran divisions in V and VI Corps, and two new divisions marching to join them. Would they have strength enough to break the Confederate line if he committed them to action tomorrow?
The answer to that question depended on the condition of Lee’s army. Had it been hurt as badly as his own? Was the weakness reported by Lieutenant Wilson and Captain Dryer real; or were they mistaken, and was the Confederate army still before him in unbroken strength?
McClellan had a long night ahead of him, hours in which to weigh the alternatives, to consider and reconsider the risks of further offensive action.19