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On September 17, 1862, at the Battle of Antietam [Battle of Sharpsburg], the bloodiest day in the American Civil War took place. There were 22,000 dead, wounded or missing in first battle on Union soil. From the article:
"Battle Of Antietam Summary: The Battle of Antietam, a.k.a. Battle of Sharpsburg, resulted in not only the bloodiest day of the American Civil War, but the bloodiest single day in all of American history. Fought primarily on September 17, 1862, between the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, it ended Gen. Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of a northern state.
Battle Of Antietam Facts
Location
Sharpsburg, Washington County, Maryland
Date
September 17, 1862
Generals
Union: Major General George B. McClellan
Confederate: General Robert E. Lee
Soldiers Engaged
Union Army: 75,300
Confederate Army: 52,000
Outcome
Union victory, in that Lee withdrew to Virginia.
Battle Of Antietam Casualties
Union: 12,400
Confederate: 10,300
Antietam Pictures
Antietam Images, Pictures and Photos
Antietam Articles
Explore articles from the History Net archives about the Battle Of Antietam
Prelude to Antietam
Shortly after routing the Union Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Battle of Manassas) in August, 1862, Lee led his own Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac into Maryland. Reasons for this invasion included taking pressure off the Shenandoah Valley—"The Breadbasket of the Confederacy"—at harvest time; encouraging European support for the Confederacy by winning a battle on Northern soil; and demoralizing Northerners to reduce their support for the war while encouraging the slave-holding state of Maryland to secede and join the Confederacy.
Believing the routed Union army would require time to rebuild, Lee took the bold step of dividing his own army, sending portions of it to capture various objectives. Primarily, these objectives involved using part of Lieutenant General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson’s corps to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), while the largest corps, that of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, proceeded on the road toward Sharpsburg. Lee informed his commanders of their routes and objectives in Order No. 191 on September 9.
In a series of events too strange to be believable in fiction, a copy of Order No. 191 was used to bundle a few cigars and the bundle was inadvertently dropped in a field on the Best Farm, where it was found by Federal soldiers of the 27th Indiana Regiment. The marching orders were taken to Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who had been recalled from the Virginia peninsula along with the Army of the Potomac (see Seven Days Battle).
Whatever his flaws as a field commander, "Little Mac" was an organizer who had the confidence of his troops. On September 12, the Army of Virginia was disbanded and absorbed into the Army of the Potomac, with McClellan as the commander—John Pope was sent to Minnesota to fight Indians— and he had the army ready for action sooner than Lee had anticipated.
The benefits of the intelligence windfall that dropped into McClellan’s hands were blunted, however, because a Southern sympathizer informed Lee that McClellan had a copy of his orders, and because McClellan moved with his typical glacial pace. He allowed 17 hours to pass before marching toward Lee’s force, allowing time for the Confederates to begin regrouping around the town of Sharpsburg at the base of South Mountain.
Battle of South Mountain
On September 14, some 38,000 Union troops attacked 12,000 Confederates posted as rear guards at Crampton’s, Turner’s and Fox’s gaps on South Mountain, approximately 1,000 feet above sea level. The defenders were pushed out by dusk, at a cost of 2,500 Union casualties and 3,800 Confederates.
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At that time, Lee had only some 18,000 effectives around Sharpsburg. Had McClellan attacked with his 75,000-man army, or even the troops now atop South Mountain, the Southerners would have had little chance. Instead, fearing Lee might outnumber him, he moved his men to the ridges east of Antietam Creek, where he paused to let them rest.
Troops Arrive At Sharpsburg
By midday of September 16, all but three of Lee’s nine divisions had arrived. Two hundred artillery pieces supported the infantry that was spread out in the woods and rolling fields in a bend of the Potomac River. The Army of Northern Virginia was fanned out crescent-like, its right flank on Antietam Creek and its left on the Potomac River, with Lt. Gen. J.E.B. "Jeb" Stuart’s cavalry guarding the gap between the Potomac and the infantry’s left flank. Although a strong position with the advantage of interior lines of communication, it might also be a death trap with the Potomac cutting off retreat.
On the afternoon of September 16, McClellan sent Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker across Antietam Creek with I Corps, which only resulted in minor skirmishing around sunset on the north of the Confederates’ position, alerting Lee to where McClellan planned his initial attacks.
Whatever McClellan’s plans, he wasn’t sharing them with his corps commanders. He assigned them to attack certain areas but failed to communicate an overall plan or to coordinate their assaults. Essentially, each corps would operate as its commander saw fit.
The Battle Of Antietam: Morning
(The Dunker Church, East & West Woods, Carnage In The Cornfield)
The overcast, drizzly morning of September 17 soon gave way to sunshine that glinted off the bayonets and rifle barrels of Hooker’s men as they marched toward a whitewashed Church of the Baptist Brethren, a sect commonly called Dunkers because they practiced complete immersion in baptisms. The Dunker Church sat between the Hagerstown Road and the West Woods, woods that concealed men of Stonewall Jackson’s corps. A little way north and on the opposite side of the road lay D. R. Miller’s cornfield. Hooker’s men emerged from the North Woods just beyond that field, and his artillery set up on its edge. Again and again, Confederate counterattacks would crumple in the close-range canister fired by those guns, but initially these cannon and those across Antietam Creek poured long-range fire into the Confederate positions. The Battle of Antietam became known as "Artillery Hell." A combined total of 500 guns fired mostly from small rises with long, clear lines of sight. Rocky outcroppings throughout the battlefield caused solid-shot shells to ricochet wildly.
For a time, the Union troops made progress, but attack and counterattack turned the West Woods and Miller’s cornfield into slaughter pens. In Miller’s cornfield—or simply The Cornfield—trampled bodies became indistinguishable from the dust in which they lay. The I Corps attack was successfully blunted, and Lee shifted troops from the right of his line to meet a new threat.
Brigadier General J. K. F. Mansfield came to reinforce Hooker with XII Corps. The oldest general officer in McClellan’s army, the 59-year-old Mansfield was mortally wounded while riding forward to reconnoiter and was replaced by Brig. Gen. A. S. Williams as Hooker’s I Corps was falling back to their starting positions. One division of XII Corps fought its way through the East Woods, outflanked the Texas troops of Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood in the cornfield, and penetrated into the West Wood near Dunker Church. Reinforcements that might have carried the day for the Union at that point never arrived, and another Federal drive stalled.
Major General Edwin Sumner’s II Corps crossed Antietam Creek sometime after 7:30 a.m., with orders to support the two corps already engaged. Only two of Sumner’s divisions made the crossing, however. That of Maj. Gen. John Sedgewick followed part of the XII Corps toward the West Woods, while Brig. Gen. William H. French’s division swung to the left, toward the center of the Confederate line.
Battle Of Antietam: Midday
(Sunken Road aka Bloody Lane)
Under fire from sharpshooters and artillery, the first of French’s brigades crested a little rise; less than 100 yards below them in a sunken farm road were three Confederate brigades of Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill’s division. A sheet of flame erupted from the sunken road and the crest of the ridge was covered with a blue blanket of dead or wounded Union soldiers. The brigade fell back; another took its place, with the same result. Brigadier General Nathan Kimball was then ordered forward with his brigade of four regiments. These men, many of them veterans of the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia Peninsula campaigns, did not fall back. Lying on the downside of the slope and rolling onto their sides to reload, they poured fire into the ranks of the Confederates below, who responded in kind. Blood turned the dirt in the road to mud, giving the sunken road the sobriquet Bloody Lane. Sumner declared that Kimball’s brigade had held "like the Rock of Gibraltar" after two other Union brigades had fled. The unit thereafter was known as the Gibraltar Brigade.
Union major general Israel B. Richardson arrived on the left of Kimball’s brigade. Leading the way was the New York Irish Brigade, led by Waterford, Ireland–born Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher. The Irishmen were engaged by Brig. Gen. Ambrose Wright’s brigade of Maj. Gen. Richard H. "Fighting Dick" Anderson’s division, which had been sent to reinforce Hill. Wright and Meagher’s men fought at a distance of 30–50 paces from each other. Anderson himself was wounded soon after arriving on the field and, except for Wright’s brigade, his 3,000–4,000 men provided little help to Hill, whose men were finally pushed out by weight of numbers.
Battle of Antietam: Afternoon
(Burnside Bridge, A.P. Hill Counterattack)
At the extreme right of Lee’s line, three Confederate batteries and the 600-man infantry brigade of Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs looked down from a steep hill onto Rohrbach Bridge, a narrow, stone bridge over Antietam Creek on the Rohrersville–Sharpsburg Road. Crossing that bridge had been the assignment of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside as soon as the Union attacks farther to the right showed signs of progress. Despite repeated messages from McClellan, beginning at 10 a.m., Burnside did not press the attack with the 13,000 men of his IX Corps other than a few desultory attempts. Finally, after 1:00 p.m., the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania regiments charged across the bridge under withering fire, fanned out, and attacked the slope where the Confederates were lodged. The Southerners soon withdrew and by 3 p.m. Burnside’s corps was across the little bridge that would ever after bear the name Burnside’s Bridge.
The firing elsewhere on the field had died down, but Burnside’s IX Corps was advancing on Sharpsburg in Lee’s rear. The Gray Fox, as Lee became known, had used his interior lines all day to shift troops from one part of the field to another, but he had no more to send against this threat on his right.
At the crucial moment, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill, wearing his red battle shirt, arrived from Harpers Ferry with the Light Division. Hill had driven his men—many of them wearing Union uniforms taken at Harpers Ferry—northward mercilessly, sometimes beating them with the flat of his sword to keep them moving at the double-quick.
The Light Division fell upon Burnside’s flank, disordering his men and convincing the cautious Union officer that he’d done enough for one day. The Battle of Antietam was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Throughout the fighting, McClellan had kept Maj. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps, plus a division of the VI Corps, in reserve. Committing them at any point during the fight might have carried the day for Little Mac. They were also fresh troops who might have been employed for renewed attacks on the next day, but McClellan spent September 18 licking his wounds—as Lee had predicted he would do.
Despite advice from his corps commanders to withdraw during the night of the 17th, Lee said McClellan would not attack the next day and remained in place until withdrawing on the night of the 18th. Such Union pursuit as there was ended in a sharp skirmish just south of the Potomac at Shepherdstown, in what is now West Virginia.
Over 22,000 Americans lay dead or wounded or were among the missing: the highest single-day casualty total of the Civil War. Homes, stores, churches and barns for miles around were turned into hospitals and the resulting diseases claimed a heavy toll among the civilians in and around Sharpsburg.
The bloody stalemate was a Union victory only in the sense that McClellan retained command of the field and Lee’s first northern invasion had ended without accomplishing anything other than drawing attention away from the farms of the Shenandoah Valley. President Abraham Lincoln seized on the battle as the closest thing he was likely to get to a victory and announced his Emancipation Proclamation, which would take effect January 1.
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Both army commanders deluded themselves. McClellan wrote to his wife, "They tell me I fought the battle splendidly." Lee thought he had won a victory until reports came in about the rate of desertions in his army. He offered amnesty to any man who would return to the ranks.
However "splendidly" McClellan thought he’d performed, his failure to pursue Lee was the final straw for Lincoln, who replaced Little Mac with Ambrose Burnside, over Burnside’s own protests that he wasn’t capable of leading the army. He would prove the truth of his protests in December at a Union bloodbath known as the Battle of Fredericksburg."
"Battle Of Antietam Summary: The Battle of Antietam, a.k.a. Battle of Sharpsburg, resulted in not only the bloodiest day of the American Civil War, but the bloodiest single day in all of American history. Fought primarily on September 17, 1862, between the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, it ended Gen. Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of a northern state.
Battle Of Antietam Facts
Location
Sharpsburg, Washington County, Maryland
Date
September 17, 1862
Generals
Union: Major General George B. McClellan
Confederate: General Robert E. Lee
Soldiers Engaged
Union Army: 75,300
Confederate Army: 52,000
Outcome
Union victory, in that Lee withdrew to Virginia.
Battle Of Antietam Casualties
Union: 12,400
Confederate: 10,300
Antietam Pictures
Antietam Images, Pictures and Photos
Antietam Articles
Explore articles from the History Net archives about the Battle Of Antietam
Prelude to Antietam
Shortly after routing the Union Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope in the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Battle of Manassas) in August, 1862, Lee led his own Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac into Maryland. Reasons for this invasion included taking pressure off the Shenandoah Valley—"The Breadbasket of the Confederacy"—at harvest time; encouraging European support for the Confederacy by winning a battle on Northern soil; and demoralizing Northerners to reduce their support for the war while encouraging the slave-holding state of Maryland to secede and join the Confederacy.
Believing the routed Union army would require time to rebuild, Lee took the bold step of dividing his own army, sending portions of it to capture various objectives. Primarily, these objectives involved using part of Lieutenant General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson’s corps to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), while the largest corps, that of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, proceeded on the road toward Sharpsburg. Lee informed his commanders of their routes and objectives in Order No. 191 on September 9.
In a series of events too strange to be believable in fiction, a copy of Order No. 191 was used to bundle a few cigars and the bundle was inadvertently dropped in a field on the Best Farm, where it was found by Federal soldiers of the 27th Indiana Regiment. The marching orders were taken to Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who had been recalled from the Virginia peninsula along with the Army of the Potomac (see Seven Days Battle).
Whatever his flaws as a field commander, "Little Mac" was an organizer who had the confidence of his troops. On September 12, the Army of Virginia was disbanded and absorbed into the Army of the Potomac, with McClellan as the commander—John Pope was sent to Minnesota to fight Indians— and he had the army ready for action sooner than Lee had anticipated.
The benefits of the intelligence windfall that dropped into McClellan’s hands were blunted, however, because a Southern sympathizer informed Lee that McClellan had a copy of his orders, and because McClellan moved with his typical glacial pace. He allowed 17 hours to pass before marching toward Lee’s force, allowing time for the Confederates to begin regrouping around the town of Sharpsburg at the base of South Mountain.
Battle of South Mountain
On September 14, some 38,000 Union troops attacked 12,000 Confederates posted as rear guards at Crampton’s, Turner’s and Fox’s gaps on South Mountain, approximately 1,000 feet above sea level. The defenders were pushed out by dusk, at a cost of 2,500 Union casualties and 3,800 Confederates.
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At that time, Lee had only some 18,000 effectives around Sharpsburg. Had McClellan attacked with his 75,000-man army, or even the troops now atop South Mountain, the Southerners would have had little chance. Instead, fearing Lee might outnumber him, he moved his men to the ridges east of Antietam Creek, where he paused to let them rest.
Troops Arrive At Sharpsburg
By midday of September 16, all but three of Lee’s nine divisions had arrived. Two hundred artillery pieces supported the infantry that was spread out in the woods and rolling fields in a bend of the Potomac River. The Army of Northern Virginia was fanned out crescent-like, its right flank on Antietam Creek and its left on the Potomac River, with Lt. Gen. J.E.B. "Jeb" Stuart’s cavalry guarding the gap between the Potomac and the infantry’s left flank. Although a strong position with the advantage of interior lines of communication, it might also be a death trap with the Potomac cutting off retreat.
On the afternoon of September 16, McClellan sent Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker across Antietam Creek with I Corps, which only resulted in minor skirmishing around sunset on the north of the Confederates’ position, alerting Lee to where McClellan planned his initial attacks.
Whatever McClellan’s plans, he wasn’t sharing them with his corps commanders. He assigned them to attack certain areas but failed to communicate an overall plan or to coordinate their assaults. Essentially, each corps would operate as its commander saw fit.
The Battle Of Antietam: Morning
(The Dunker Church, East & West Woods, Carnage In The Cornfield)
The overcast, drizzly morning of September 17 soon gave way to sunshine that glinted off the bayonets and rifle barrels of Hooker’s men as they marched toward a whitewashed Church of the Baptist Brethren, a sect commonly called Dunkers because they practiced complete immersion in baptisms. The Dunker Church sat between the Hagerstown Road and the West Woods, woods that concealed men of Stonewall Jackson’s corps. A little way north and on the opposite side of the road lay D. R. Miller’s cornfield. Hooker’s men emerged from the North Woods just beyond that field, and his artillery set up on its edge. Again and again, Confederate counterattacks would crumple in the close-range canister fired by those guns, but initially these cannon and those across Antietam Creek poured long-range fire into the Confederate positions. The Battle of Antietam became known as "Artillery Hell." A combined total of 500 guns fired mostly from small rises with long, clear lines of sight. Rocky outcroppings throughout the battlefield caused solid-shot shells to ricochet wildly.
For a time, the Union troops made progress, but attack and counterattack turned the West Woods and Miller’s cornfield into slaughter pens. In Miller’s cornfield—or simply The Cornfield—trampled bodies became indistinguishable from the dust in which they lay. The I Corps attack was successfully blunted, and Lee shifted troops from the right of his line to meet a new threat.
Brigadier General J. K. F. Mansfield came to reinforce Hooker with XII Corps. The oldest general officer in McClellan’s army, the 59-year-old Mansfield was mortally wounded while riding forward to reconnoiter and was replaced by Brig. Gen. A. S. Williams as Hooker’s I Corps was falling back to their starting positions. One division of XII Corps fought its way through the East Woods, outflanked the Texas troops of Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood in the cornfield, and penetrated into the West Wood near Dunker Church. Reinforcements that might have carried the day for the Union at that point never arrived, and another Federal drive stalled.
Major General Edwin Sumner’s II Corps crossed Antietam Creek sometime after 7:30 a.m., with orders to support the two corps already engaged. Only two of Sumner’s divisions made the crossing, however. That of Maj. Gen. John Sedgewick followed part of the XII Corps toward the West Woods, while Brig. Gen. William H. French’s division swung to the left, toward the center of the Confederate line.
Battle Of Antietam: Midday
(Sunken Road aka Bloody Lane)
Under fire from sharpshooters and artillery, the first of French’s brigades crested a little rise; less than 100 yards below them in a sunken farm road were three Confederate brigades of Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill’s division. A sheet of flame erupted from the sunken road and the crest of the ridge was covered with a blue blanket of dead or wounded Union soldiers. The brigade fell back; another took its place, with the same result. Brigadier General Nathan Kimball was then ordered forward with his brigade of four regiments. These men, many of them veterans of the Shenandoah Valley and the Virginia Peninsula campaigns, did not fall back. Lying on the downside of the slope and rolling onto their sides to reload, they poured fire into the ranks of the Confederates below, who responded in kind. Blood turned the dirt in the road to mud, giving the sunken road the sobriquet Bloody Lane. Sumner declared that Kimball’s brigade had held "like the Rock of Gibraltar" after two other Union brigades had fled. The unit thereafter was known as the Gibraltar Brigade.
Union major general Israel B. Richardson arrived on the left of Kimball’s brigade. Leading the way was the New York Irish Brigade, led by Waterford, Ireland–born Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher. The Irishmen were engaged by Brig. Gen. Ambrose Wright’s brigade of Maj. Gen. Richard H. "Fighting Dick" Anderson’s division, which had been sent to reinforce Hill. Wright and Meagher’s men fought at a distance of 30–50 paces from each other. Anderson himself was wounded soon after arriving on the field and, except for Wright’s brigade, his 3,000–4,000 men provided little help to Hill, whose men were finally pushed out by weight of numbers.
Battle of Antietam: Afternoon
(Burnside Bridge, A.P. Hill Counterattack)
At the extreme right of Lee’s line, three Confederate batteries and the 600-man infantry brigade of Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs looked down from a steep hill onto Rohrbach Bridge, a narrow, stone bridge over Antietam Creek on the Rohrersville–Sharpsburg Road. Crossing that bridge had been the assignment of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside as soon as the Union attacks farther to the right showed signs of progress. Despite repeated messages from McClellan, beginning at 10 a.m., Burnside did not press the attack with the 13,000 men of his IX Corps other than a few desultory attempts. Finally, after 1:00 p.m., the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania regiments charged across the bridge under withering fire, fanned out, and attacked the slope where the Confederates were lodged. The Southerners soon withdrew and by 3 p.m. Burnside’s corps was across the little bridge that would ever after bear the name Burnside’s Bridge.
The firing elsewhere on the field had died down, but Burnside’s IX Corps was advancing on Sharpsburg in Lee’s rear. The Gray Fox, as Lee became known, had used his interior lines all day to shift troops from one part of the field to another, but he had no more to send against this threat on his right.
At the crucial moment, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill, wearing his red battle shirt, arrived from Harpers Ferry with the Light Division. Hill had driven his men—many of them wearing Union uniforms taken at Harpers Ferry—northward mercilessly, sometimes beating them with the flat of his sword to keep them moving at the double-quick.
The Light Division fell upon Burnside’s flank, disordering his men and convincing the cautious Union officer that he’d done enough for one day. The Battle of Antietam was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Throughout the fighting, McClellan had kept Maj. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps, plus a division of the VI Corps, in reserve. Committing them at any point during the fight might have carried the day for Little Mac. They were also fresh troops who might have been employed for renewed attacks on the next day, but McClellan spent September 18 licking his wounds—as Lee had predicted he would do.
Despite advice from his corps commanders to withdraw during the night of the 17th, Lee said McClellan would not attack the next day and remained in place until withdrawing on the night of the 18th. Such Union pursuit as there was ended in a sharp skirmish just south of the Potomac at Shepherdstown, in what is now West Virginia.
Over 22,000 Americans lay dead or wounded or were among the missing: the highest single-day casualty total of the Civil War. Homes, stores, churches and barns for miles around were turned into hospitals and the resulting diseases claimed a heavy toll among the civilians in and around Sharpsburg.
The bloody stalemate was a Union victory only in the sense that McClellan retained command of the field and Lee’s first northern invasion had ended without accomplishing anything other than drawing attention away from the farms of the Shenandoah Valley. President Abraham Lincoln seized on the battle as the closest thing he was likely to get to a victory and announced his Emancipation Proclamation, which would take effect January 1.
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Both army commanders deluded themselves. McClellan wrote to his wife, "They tell me I fought the battle splendidly." Lee thought he had won a victory until reports came in about the rate of desertions in his army. He offered amnesty to any man who would return to the ranks.
However "splendidly" McClellan thought he’d performed, his failure to pursue Lee was the final straw for Lincoln, who replaced Little Mac with Ambrose Burnside, over Burnside’s own protests that he wasn’t capable of leading the army. He would prove the truth of his protests in December at a Union bloodbath known as the Battle of Fredericksburg."
Battle Of Antietam
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