CHAPTER 15
SEPTEMBER 18, 1862
BY EARLY EVENING THE FIGHTING HAD ENDED. THE SUN AS IT SET appeared swollen and blood-red. Except for scattered spats between infantry patrols, the gunfire dwindled to silence. Then you could hear rising from the fields between and behind the lines the cries and moans and shrieks of more than 17,000 wounded men, and smell beneath the fading bitterness of gunsmoke the rising stench of 3,600 men and hundreds of horses and mules lying dead on the ground and beginning to rot in the heat. “[G]roans and cries for water could be heard the whole night. We could not help them.” There would be no flag of truce put out, under which the wounded lying between the lines could be found and carried to an aid station. According to military protocol, to ask for a flag of truce was to acknowledge defeat and implicitly agree to discontinue the engagement. Both sides believed that, despite the daylong fight and the terrible casualties, the issue had not been settled. The fighting would continue in the morning. Search parties had to sneak around in the dark, bearing lanterns or candles, risking a bullet to recover the wounded and the bodies of dead comrades, who were also their friends, neighbors, kinfolk.1
This was the atmosphere in which Lee and McClellan, along with their army staffs and field commanders, met to assess the day’s achievements and decide what to do the following day—attack, hold their ground, or retreat.
Their choices were characteristic. The battle so far had produced a tactical stalemate. Lee chose to hold his ground and embrace the risks and opportunities of continued battle, hoping to make the stalemate break in his favor. McClellan would refuse those risks and stand on the defensive. Neither choice was justified by the real balance of forces on the battlefield. At the beginning of the fight, McClellan had opposed 72,500 troops to Lee’s 35,000, to which A. P. Hill’s Division added perhaps 3,000—a Union advantage approaching two to one. Battle losses had reduced Lee’s available force to about 27,000 men, while McClellan’s losses (about 13,000) would be largely offset by the arrival of two fresh divisions. That reinforcement would give McClellan an advantage approaching three to one. To transform stalemate into decisive victory, Lee would have had to strike with sufficient force to compel McClellan to retreat. Yet, given the sheer mass of the Federal army, and the nature of the terrain, that was an impossibility. McClellan could simply stay put, and Lee would have to retreat. By holding his ground and toying with the idea of a counterattack, Lee would expose his army to further loss and possible destruction without a reasonable chance of victory. McClellan’s bad judgment was the mirror image of Lee’s: he would fail to recognize and make use of his advantage in numbers, allowing Lee to stand his ground unmolested all day on the eighteenth and to retreat with impunity that night.
The net result of their decisions was that, in a tactical sense, nothing happened on September 18. Nevertheless, their decisions had strategic consequences, affecting both the future of military operations and the political actions that would transform the character and conduct of the war.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS:
LEE PLANS TO CONTINUE THE BATTLE
Lee’s decision to hold his ground on the eighteenth has been praised as an act of daring, which minimized the impact of defeat on the army and the Southern public. According to this view, Lee required the entire Army of Northern Virginia to display the same bravado shown by the Irish Brigade when it formed in parade-ground ranks before marching off to replenish its ammunition, and for the same purpose: to maintain its own pride and overawe the enemy. The only justification for the decision was Lee’s assumption, based on experience, that McClellan would be reluctant to fight. For Lee’s critics, the success of the gamble does not obviate the question whether or not this was an appropriate purpose for which to risk the army. They see this decision as reflecting his excessive commitment to the offensive, which over time would drain his army’s and his country’s limited manpower resources. Lee himself never fully explained the grounds for his decision. His reasoning can only be guessed from the little he did say, and the actions he took.2
AFTER SUNSET, THE ARMY’S senior officers made their way to the tent in which Lee had his headquarters, to report to their commander. There were fires and lanterns in the tented encampment, but the red glow of a nearby burning farmhouse colored the atmosphere. Lee and his small staff sat at a camp table in the open air, and as they arrived the corps and division commanders came up to make their reports, then stepped back to add themselves to the growing circle around the army commander.
Lee’s manner was, as always, calm and assured, and he seemed to expect words of encouragement as he asked each general, “How is it on your part of the line?” The responses he got were uniformly grim. As artilleryman S. D. Lee remembered it, each reported heavy losses and lines thinned to the danger point. The normally ferocious General Hood seemed “visibly shaken” as he reported the destruction of his division as a fighting force: “They are lying on the field where you sent them.” Longstreet arrived late, and Lee’s greeting indicated the kind of report he was looking for: “[H]ere’s my old war-horse! Let us hear what he has to say.” But Longstreet reported that his front was held by “little better than a good skirmish line.” These reports should have left Lee in no doubt that his army was in poor condition and substantially weaker than it had been on September 17.3
Nevertheless, he seems not even to have considered retreating on the night of the seventeenth. He took a few minutes to digest, in silence, these reports of loss and near disaster. Then he calmly issued orders to prepare for another day of battle. Although his exact words were not recorded, their effect and his intentions were clear: “Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac to-night. You will go to your respective commands, strengthen your forces . . . collect your stragglers and get them up. . . . If McClellan wants to fight in the morning I will give him battle again.”4
Nothing in his demeanor or his actions suggests that he feared his army might be overmatched if it stayed to fight another round. At 6:30 PM, he composed a report of the day’s action for President Davis, inaccurate in some particular details. He describes the end result as a limited success for Confederate arms: his troops had been hard-pressed by Hooker’s assault on their left, less so by Burnside’s attack on their right, but at the end of the day they had recovered nearly all the lost ground and maintained their position. He makes no mention of the heavy battle losses suffered by the army or the weakness due to straggling, and gives no estimate of the size or combat power of his remaining force, although he had lost more than twelve thousand killed, wounded, or captured, about a third of his initial strength. Historian Joseph Harsh, whose study of Lee’s headquarters is the most detailed we have, is uncertain whether Lee believed his army was in good shape for a fight or was merely putting a good face on things for President Davis.5
His actions suggest that he thought his army fit to continue the fight. After their conference, he sent his generals back to their commands with orders to strengthen their lines, gather in stragglers, and prepare for battle. He may have discounted his generals’ reports—in the emotional reflux of intense combat officers commonly overestimated their losses. During the night, men who had gotten separated from their units and were counted among the dead would return to the ranks; and stragglers who had fallen out on the forced march from Harpers Ferry were coming into camp. One of Lee’s aides estimated that as many as five thousand rifles might have returned to the battle line. It is also possible, even likely, that Lee never had a clear idea of the numerical strength of his army. Like McClellan, he may have supposed his twelve thousand casualties came from a force significantly larger than the thirty-nine thousand who had actually fought on September 17.6
There was also good tactical justification for standing pat. Even if he had believed his army was overmatched, it would have been extremely difficult to make an organized and orderly general retreat in the immediate aftermath of battle. Front-line commands were still partly entangled with the enemy. All had suffered considerable disorganization during the fighting, and it would take hours for dislocated troops to rejoin their commands. A day’s delay would allow the safe removal of many wounded men who would otherwise be left behind and lost to the army. With these considerations in view, it is easier to understand Lee’s willingness to risk an attack on the eighteenth and to see his defiant stance as a bluff.
However, Lee did not see his options as limited to a defensive bluff. When by midmorning it appeared that McClellan was not about to attack, Lee decided to take the offensive himself. Around 10:00 AM he rode to Jackson’s headquarters to propose a heavy assault against McClellan’s right flank. The previous day’s action had showed that the Confederates’ mobile artillery was capable of swift concentration and that its firepower could yield decisive results. Lee proposed to send Jackson fifty guns, commanded by Colonel S. D. Lee, whose rapid movement and skilled gunnery had saved each flank of the army in turn. If Colonel Lee’s guns could suppress the Federal artillery of I Corps, it might be possible for Jackson and Stuart to succeed in their second attempt to break or turn McClellan’s right flank.7
It is hard to know exactly what Lee intended or hoped to achieve. The maneuver could have been justified as a spoiling attack designed to impress McClellan with the danger of resuming the offensive on the eighteenth, thereby making it easier for Lee’s army to retreat in good order that night. But nothing in the conversations among Lee, Jackson, and S. D. Lee indicates so limited a mission. It is more likely that the proposed attack was Lee’s last bid for battlefield victory. He hoped that Jackson’s assault would so threaten McClellan’s flank that the Federal general would take fright, as he had in the Seven Days, and retreat to or beyond the South Mountain passes.8
The fact that Lee would contemplate such an offensive suggests that he had not fully grasped the character and outcome of the previous day’s fighting. While Lee’s contempt for McClellan was justified by experience, he should have had a better appreciation of the morale and combat effectiveness of McClellan’s soldiers. It was irrational to suppose that the troops who had shown such skill, persistence, and courage battling for the Dunker Church and storming the Sunken Road could be driven from their positions with fifty guns and a few thousand infantry. Confederate generals were perhaps too prone to believe Confederate propaganda, which denigrated the Yankees’ commitment to their cause and dismissed them as store clerks and mercenaries. Lee’s orders also suggest that he was out of touch with the precise condition of his own army, and the extent of its losses both to straggling and to combat. However, from the beginning of this campaign Lee had grossly overestimated the strength and capabilities of his command. That overestimate had led him to divide his army and disperse its strength, and send it on those long marches over mountain and river that would exhaust the men and cause the straggling that would deprive him of a third of his infantry.9
The result was an army that had reached the limit of its offensive capacity. Jackson and S. D. Lee both examined the Federal lines through field glasses, and Jackson, without indicating his own attitude, pressed Colonel Lee for his opinion whether he could “crush the Federal right with fifty guns.” The colonel’s answer was that “it cannot be done with fifty guns and the troops you have near here.” No amount of artillery could compensate for the lack of infantry. On Jackson’s order, Colonel Lee reported their conversation to General Lee, and he noted that “a shade [came] over General Lee’s face.” He had been forced to recognize that no offensive action on his part could reverse the verdict of the seventeenth. As Colonel Porter Alexander had said, he could get no more from this ground than a battlefield stalemate. That being the case, he had no recourse but to call off the campaign and retreat to Virginia.10
Orders went out to keep up a strong front that day and prepare the army for a retreat that night.
MCCLELLAN: “IT IS ALL IN [GOD’S] HANDS,
WHERE I AM CONTENT TO LEAVE IT”
On the other side of Antietam Creek, McClellan’s refusal to attack on the eighteenth raises far more serious questions about his judgment and motives than the errors of planning and execution that marred his tactical command the day before. These can be explained as the mistakes of a general with no experience in conducting an offensive general engagement, who was also handicapped by a false estimate of enemy strength. The fact remains that he initiated the combat, and did so in hopes of winning a victory by forcing Lee to retreat into Virginia. His decision not to continue fighting on the eighteenth is more puzzling, and would prove far more troubling to McClellan’s contemporaries than the indecisive result of the fighting the day before.
McClellan returned to his headquarters in Keedysville at nightfall. The very large, peak-topped white tents in which he and his staff lived and worked gleamed among the small clapboard houses of the little town. McClellan’s conference with Franklin earlier that evening had seemingly convinced him that a new offensive was feasible. Before midnight he sent off an urgent dispatch to Halleck requesting a resupply of ammunition for his twenty-pounder Parrott guns, essential support for any offensive. According to Colonel Strother of his staff, he sketched out a preliminary plan of attack, based on Franklin’s proposal. At daybreak Franklin would use his two VI Corps divisions to storm Nicodemus Hill and plant batteries there to sweep the left flank of the Confederate line. I Corps, commanded by General George G. Meade in place of the wounded Hooker, would support this attack by advancing against Confederate positions in the West Woods and adjacent fields. McClellan also ordered Couch’s Division to march up from Pleasant Valley to provide a reserve for Franklin and Meade. In conjunction with Franklin’s attack, Burnside’s IX Corps would assault the Confederate right, presumably as a diversion. Porter’s two V Corps divisions would remain massed in the center, to be joined at an early hour by Humphreys’s Division of V Corps, marching up from Washington. Some or all of V Corps could then be used for an attack across the Middle Bridge or to reinforce Franklin or Burnside as needed.11
Strother went to bed happy in the assumption that the army would attack at dawn and win a great victory. His expectations were widely if not universally shared. Lieutenant Wilson agreed that an offensive against Lee’s left would lead to victory. General Sykes believed the reports of his officers who had seen the thinness of the Confederate line in front of Sharpsburg. Both thought McClellan had missed splendid opportunities during the day, but such errors were inescapable in the confusion of battle. They thought McClellan might do better now that he had time to make a plan and could draw on the knowledge of the enemy gained in fourteen hours of close engagement.
George Smalley, the Tribune correspondent, concurred in that judgment. He had been with McClellan for most of the day, had visited the crucial northern front just after the capture of the Sunken Road, and had drafted a long article giving a fairly complete account of the fighting. At nightfall he mounted his horse and set out on an all-night ride to the telegraph office in Frederick, where the story he filed would give Washington its first real news of the battle, and Smalley’s assessment of the army’s prospects. Smalley had personally observed some of the most critical turns in the battle, and his report made it clear that opportunities had been missed. Nevertheless, he thought that if McClellan followed through on his plan to attack again on the eighteenth, “there is every reason why McClellan should win.”12
Of course there were also reasons why McClellan might not win. During a night of what he described as “anxious deliberations,” McClellan was bound to come up with a list of cautions and caveats, shared with a group of advisers whose views were far less sanguine than those of Franklin, Wilson, and Strother. General Meade, who had replaced Hooker, thought I Corps was fit and ready “[t]o resist an attack in our present strong position,” but “I do not think their morale is as good for an offensive . . . movement.” Sumner told McClellan that Sedgwick’s Division was “a good deal scattered and demoralized” and “not . . . in proper condition to attack the enemy vigorously the next day.” He also expressed doubts about the condition of French’s and Richardson’s Divisions. These divisions had suffered casualty rates of 35 percent and 29 percent, respectively—much higher than the losses in I Corps, which Meade thought unable to take the offensive. Sedgwick and Richardson, Sumner’s most aggressive division commanders, were wounded and out of action, as were many of the brigade and regimental commanders whose skill and courage had enabled them to carry the Sunken Road.13
The situation in IX Corps was also uncertain. By objective measures, their casualties had been relatively light. Rodman’s Division was wrecked, with casualties at 41 percent of its engaged strength; and Sturgis’s Division had suffered serious losses (20 percent) which still fell well short of the rates in I, II, and XII Corps. But the divisions of Scammon and Willcox had been pulled back before the Rebel counterattack could hit them, and their losses were relatively light—15 percent and 8 percent, respectively. The problem in IX Corps was not strength but spirit. McClellan believed that the large number of “new troops” in IX Corps had been “driven back and their morale impaired.” General Burnside’s morale was also questionable.
After dark, Burnside rode to the Keedysville headquarters to ask for reinforcement by Morell’s Division of V Corps. Burnside would later claim that he reported his corps in good condition and only wanted Morell to lend strength to any projected attack. According to McClellan, Burnside needed reinforcement simply to hold his present lines. Both accounts were offered much later, at a time when the two generals were defending themselves against the dangerous scrutiny of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. While neither can be taken at face value, McClellan’s is the more credible. Burnside could not have been seeking support for a morning attack, since McClellan had not yet decided to make one. Moreover, there is little doubt that Burnside had been shaken by his corps’ repulse, and the request for reinforcement would have added credibility to his excuse that superior enemy force had caused his defeat. When McClellan refused to send Morell, Burnside begged him to visit IX Corps’ position early the next morning to judge the situation for himself, and McClellan agreed.
Burnside’s visit probably reinforced McClellan’s inevitable second thoughts about renewing the offensive at an early hour. Although the divisions of Humphreys and Couch were coming to reinforce him, McClellan thought they would not arrive till late in the morning. After their long marches, there was no telling whether they would be fit for immediate action. Moreover, the ammunition resupply for his heavy artillery could not reach Keedysville till late afternoon.
With this in mind, McClellan temporarily suspended Franklin’s attack order. During the small hours of the morning, Colonel Strother was awakened by the sudden stirring of staff officers and was dismayed to hear the order given to hold and “not to attack without further orders.” He tried to go back to sleep but was goaded to wakefulness by the premonition that the army was about to “lose the fruits of a victory already achieved.”14
In fact, McClellan had not definitely abandoned the idea, but he saw difficulties that had to be dealt with first. McClellan’s state of mind that morning, and his understanding of his army’s situation, is suggested by the telegrams he dispatched at 8:00 AM to General in Chief Halleck and to his wife. Both messages claimed significant but limited success and projected a continuation of the fighting, but in oddly ambiguous terms that suggested both issues were still in doubt. The telegram to Halleck describes an intense and extended combat, largely successful for Union arms but not yet resolved: the army had suffered heavy losses, especially in general officers, but “We held all we gained except a portion of the extreme left,” where Burnside had been forced to retreat. He asked that reinforcement be sent “by the most expeditious route.” He reported, “The battle will probably be renewed today,” but did not say which side would do the renewing. To his wife, he wrote more vauntingly of his own performance in the “desperate” and “terrible” fourteen-hour battle “against the entire rebel army,” a phrase that for McClellan implies a superior force. “Those in whose judgment I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly & that it was a ‘masterpiece of art.’ ” Yet he candidly admits that the results of the masterpiece were modest: “The general result was in our favor, that is to say we gained a great deal of ground & held it. It was a success, but whether a decided victory depends on what occurs today.” At that time he was inclined to do nothing himself to force such a result. “I hope that God has given us a great success. It is all in his hands, where I am content to leave it.”15
However, the same motives that had driven him to attack Lee on the seventeenth were still operative. As he would later write in his “Final Report,” “I am aware of the fact that under ordinary circumstances a general is expected to risk a battle if he has a reasonable prospect of success.”16 That expectation would be heightened for McClellan, who was facing an invading army on Northern soil—who had been summoned from exile to save the nation by repelling or destroying the invader. The odds against McClellan were no greater on the eighteenth than they had been on the seventeenth, and even by his eccentric mathematics they were probably better. McClellan assumed he had originally faced a force roughly equal to his own, and he calculated that casualties had been equivalent on both sides. Couch’s and Humphreys’s Union troops would nearly replace, in number if not quality, the men lost in action on the seventeenth. Lee had received his last reinforcements when A. P. Hill came storming up the road from Boteler’s Ford, and his army was therefore bound to be numerically weaker than McClellan’s. But while the odds of battle were better, they were not nearly favorable enough to make success a certainty. If, as McClellan assumed, Lee’s initial force had been equal to McClellan’s, then the loss of twelve thousand did not put Lee at a decisive numerical disadvantage, so long as he stood on the defensive.
There was also some truth in the claim McClellan had telegraphed to Halleck, that his army had made and held substantial gains. They were not quite as substantial as he said, but they had bettered his position for an offensive. All of his infantry and cavalry, with the exception of Morell’s Division and the new reinforcements, were across the Antietam. It would be much easier for them to act in concert, and to maintain a continuous line of battle, than it had been the day before.
On the other hand, his report to Halleck was misleading in its tale of success. The army had not, in fact, held all its gains except for a “portion” on Burnside’s front. Hooker’s two corps had seized the West Woods and Dunker Church but had been driven back nearly to their start lines. The only permanent conquest by I and XII Corps was the southern tip of the East Woods, from which Rebel skirmishers had been driven. Burnside’s Corps had swept nearly to the streets of Sharpsburg, and had then been driven back into a compact bridgehead west of the Lower Bridge. The Confederates had conceded the ground west of the Middle Bridge without a fight but had repulsed the Federal attempt to advance from that point against Sharpsburg. The only substantial gain was the capture of the Sunken Road by French and Richardson, but no attempt was made, or even contemplated, to use it as the springboard for an assault on the Rebels’ main line. These minimal gains had been purchased at an exorbitant cost in lives, which seemed to attest to the defensive power of the Confederate army. Despite its heavy casualties, Lee’s army had still been able to launch counterattacks against both Union flanks at the end of that long and bloody day.
Although losses had been heavy on both sides, the cost in combat effectiveness was greater on the Union side. The reports of Meade and Sumner, and McClellan’s own judgment, rated all of I, II, and XII Corps unfit for offensive action, though they remained capable of defending their positions. The status of IX Corps was doubtful, and the newly arriving V Corps division commanded by A. A. Humphreys consisted of rookie regiments, not yet fit for offensive combat. That left McClellan with no more than thirty-two thousand infantry fit to make an assault. On the other hand Lee, because he was the defender, would probably be able to use all of his available strength—which by McClellan’s estimate, and with allowance for yesterday’s losses, must still amount to nearly fifty thousand of all arms. By this measure the odds against a successful attack were heavier than they had been on September 17.
Of course, Lee’s actual force, even with returning stragglers, was no larger than thirty thousand, and might have been as small as twenty-seven thousand. However, a force of that size, with ample artillery and on ground favorable to the defense, was not likely to be swept from the field by a force only slightly larger. The decisive victory some historians have seen as within McClellan’s grasp on September 18 was only possible if McClellan were willing to use almost all of his available force, including the battered divisions of Meade and Ricketts, Williams and Greene, French and Richardson. Under other army commanders, but with conditions no less taxing than those that pertained at Antietam, these same brigades and divisions would display their ability to sustain intense combat for two or three days in a row. But even if McClellan had been willing to use these troops, he was unlikely to carry the day unless he managed to coordinate their assaults. This he had never been able to do, and his tactical doctrine required him to commit his forces piecemeal, holding back his reserves until the enemy’s strength had been fully developed—by which time it was too late to turn a repulse into a victory. Those tactics in turn were dictated by his strategy, which forbade the taking of military risks until his political position was secured.
So before beginning a second offensive battle against Lee’s army, McClellan wanted to have all his reinforcements in hand to ensure protection for his center when Franklin and Burnside attacked from the flanks. At 7:00 AM on the eighteenth, Humphreys had arrived from Washington with the vanguard of his division, which had been force-marched for more than seventy miles in three days. Humphreys believed he would have nearly all his men (at least six thousand) at hand within a few hours—he was hell on stragglers, who were either arrested for punishment or prodded to their feet by his provost guards. His regiments were almost entirely made up of new recruits, of doubtful value in an assault but a strong reinforcement to the army’s defensive reserve. By 10:00AM, they were in position behind Morell’s Division on the heights east of the Middle Bridge.
Couch’s Division, however, was still marching in from Pleasant Valley and would not be able to join Franklin’s command west of the Antietam until noon. McClellan therefore sent Franklin a written order at 10:00 AM suspending his attack until further notice. At the same time, he acceded to Burnside’s request for Morell’s division. At 11:00 AM Humphreys’ rookies replaced Morell’s veterans as the army’s defensive reserve, and by noon Morell had crossed the Lower Bridge to join Burnside’s command in the woods at some distance from the southern face of Lee’s defensive position. By that time Couch was moving into position with Franklin’s command west of the Antietam, and all of the elements for a renewed offensive were in place—except the heavy artillery ammunition.
Although the attack order to Franklin was only suspended, not canceled, there were indications that McClellan was growing more reluctant to resume the offensive. He had sent Morell’s fresh division to bolster Burnside’s force, but Burnside never received orders to prepare an attack. After the battle, McClellan would shift the onus for aborting the offensive to Burnside. In his “Final Report,” he described the transfer of Morell’s division to Burnside as a purely defensive move: a response to Burnside’s fear that if his corps “were attacked again that morning, he would not be able to make a very vigorous resistance” and would need Morell to cover his withdrawal to the east side of the Antietam. In their official reports McClellan and Porter both claimed that Burnside actually did withdraw his corps back across the Lower Bridge, leaving Morell alone to hold the bridgehead. This amounted to a serious charge against Burnside, who had no orders to withdraw. But the charge was false. Burnside declared that he had obeyed the order “from the commanding general to hold the bridge and the heights above at any cost, [and] this position was maintained till the enemy retreated, on the morning of the nineteenth.” He had only used Morell’s division to relieve his advanced line on the night of the eighteenth.17
The early afternoon was passed in preparation and procrastination. McClellan finally authorized a request for a truce so that each army might bring in the wounded and bury the dead that lay between the lines. Implicit in that request was an indefinite postponement of any offensive moves by McClellan’s army, since it would take hours to complete the work, and it would require a formal exchange of notes to end the truce.
When the shooting stopped, the wounded who could still crawl began to drag themselves along the ground toward the nearest troops, in desperate need and not caring whether they were friend or enemy, giving to the field “a singular crawling effect.” Details of soldiers from both armies now mingled between the lines, scouring the ditches and woodlots and cornfields for the wounded and dead. To one Confederate, “It seemed very curious to see the men on both sides come together and talk to each other when the day before we were fireing at each other.” The wounded who were recovered were delivered to the horrors of the field hospitals, pervaded by the “smell of death” from rotting piles of amputated limbs and the stench from voided bowels. The surgeons were “literally covered from head to foot with the blood of the sufferers,” as they bound wounds and amputated limbs with unwashed instruments and hands so steeped in blood that their fingernails softened. Assisting the Union surgeons was a corps of wound dressers and nurses, including women recruited for the task by Clara Barton, later the founder of the American Red Cross. Dead men, horses, and mules were scattered everywhere, between and behind the lines, and “In the midst of all this carrion our troops sat cooking, eating, jabbering, and smoking; sleeping among the corpses so that but for the color of the skin it was difficult to distinguish the living from the dead.” Among the many shocks of the Civil War battlefield was the discovery that dead White men turned black as Negroes as their bodies began to decompose.18
Then in midafternoon the days of cumulating heat finally produced a late-summer thunderstorm, with lightning flashes like amplified muzzle-flashes of a nighttime cannonade. A downpour drenched the battlefield. By the time the storm passed it seemed too late to accomplish anything. At 5:45 PM McClellan finally sent Franklin an order to attack—the next day, “at an early hour in the morning.”19
LEE RETREATS
NIGHT AND MORNING, SEPTEMBER 18–19
General Lee would spare him the agony of actually deciding to execute that order. In the early afternoon he made arrangements for the retreat, and after waiting out the thunderstorm his plan was put in motion. First the wagon train and artillery took the roads to the fords, with them the ambulances carrying the wounded. There was not enough transport for the badly wounded, so many of those who could not walk were left behind, to be cared for by the enemy. The trains were supposed to have crossed the river by nine in the evening, to allow the infantry to leave its lines and complete the river crossing under cover of darkness. However, the traffic was too heavy for the narrow roads and two difficult fords. Longstreet’s infantry abandoned its line at 9:00 PM on the eighteenth but did not cross the Potomac till 2:00 AM on the nineteenth. Jackson’s infantry did not reach the fords till daybreak, when there was nothing between Jackson and McClellan’s army but a squadron of cavalry and a single cannon, posted on the hill west of Sharpsburg where Lee had had his headquarters. But they were not molested, and by 10:00 AM the last units of the Army of Northern Virginia had put Maryland behind them.20
By the time McClellan’s skirmishers began their work of feeling out the Confederate positions, there was nothing in front of them but dead men, dead horses, and a few aid stations filled with wounded who could not be moved. As the troops moved forward they crossed rows of bloody, watery feces that marked the positions held by the dysentery-riddled Rebel infantry. At 10:30 AM McClellan would wire Halleck that “Pleasonton is driving the enemy across the river.” Like the accusation against Burnside, this was a falsehood, intended to create the impression that McClellan had whipped Lee out of his lines and driven him back to Virginia. In fact, Pleasonton did nothing but pick up a few stragglers on the road to the fords. Lee had made good his escape with minimal losses. For McClellan that was sufficient: “Our victory was complete. The enemy is driven back to Virginia. Maryland and Pennsylvania are now safe.”21
Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps followed up Pleasonton’s pursuit to the Potomac fords, which they found apparently undefended. Brigadier General Charles Griffin crossed at Boteler’s Ford and snatched four artillery pieces that had lagged behind the retreat. Porter was a better combat general than his commander, and he sent an additional brigade to join Griffin. His idea was to hold a bridgehead from which a pursuit of Lee’s fleeing army might be launched. But the move was tentative, and army headquarters not at all eager for an immediate advance into Virginia.
In fact, Lee’s army was not in flight. Lee had posted two small brigades and an artillery battery, under Brigadier General William Pendleton, as a rear guard on the high ground well back from the ford. When Pendleton reported the loss of his guns and the presence of Federals across the river, Lee ordered Jackson to drive the Federals back. Jackson detailed the task to A. P. Hill’s Division. On September 20 Hill’s five brigades attacked. A rookie regiment, the 118th Pennsylvania, bolted at the first fire and lost a third of its 730 men. Porter withdrew the rest of his troops, leaving Lee in control of the Shepherdstown crossings. However, on that same day the XII Corps reoccupied Maryland Heights. That rendered Harpers Ferry untenable for the Confederates, and in a day or so, when the Rebels had withdrawn, the Union army would “recapture” the place.
McClellan was not looking for a fight. Once he was assured that Lee’s army had gone back to Virginia, he was content to declare mission accomplished. He was now free to focus his attention and energy on that vital second front in Washington. Antietam was a vindication of his character as a soldier and a man. In a long letter to Mary Ellen, written on September 20, he expressed his relief: “Thank Heaven for one thing—my military reputation is cleared—I have shown that I can fight battles & win them!” He also believed that because of his victory, “my enemies are pretty effectively killed by this time.”22
In this, too, he was mistaken.