Chapter 21

THE BLOODIEST DAY

The struggle opened with disaster for the Union army. Though Lee's plan of campaign fell by accident into McClellan's hands, it was too late to frustrate the first master stroke. Relying on Jackson's swift, bewildering marches, Lee, in hostile territory and confronted by twice his numbers, suddenly divided his army and hurled Jackson's corps against Harper's Ferry. The garrison, after a futile struggle of two days, surrendered twelve thousand five hundred and twenty men and their vast stores of war material.

The contrast between General White, the Federal officer in command who surrendered, and Jackson, his conqueror, was strikingly dramatic. The Union General rode a magnificent black horse, was carefully dressed in shining immaculate uniform--gloves, boots and sword spotless. The Confederate General sat carelessly on his little shaggy sorrel, dusty, travel-stained and carelessly dressed.

The curiosity of the Union army which had surrendered was keen to see the famous fighter. The entire twelve thousand prisoners of war lined the road as Jackson silently rode by.

A voice from the crowd expressed the universal feeling as they gazed:

"Boys, he ain't much for looks, but, by God, if we'd had him we wouldn't have been caught in this trap!"

The first shock of Lee's and McClellan's armies was at South Mountain, where the desperate effort was made to break through and save Harper's Ferry. The attempt failed, though the Union forces won the fight. Lee lost twenty-seven hundred men, killed and wounded and prisoners, and the Federal general, twenty-one hundred.

Lee withdrew to Sharpsburg on the banks of the Antietam to meet Jackson's victorious division sweeping toward him from Harper's Ferry.

On the first day the Confederate commander made a display of force only, awaiting the alignment of Jackson's troops. His men were so poorly shod and clothed they could not be brought into line of battle. When the fateful day of September 17th, 1862, dawned, still and clear and beautiful over the hills of Maryland, more than twenty thousand of Lee's men had fallen by the roadside barefooted and exhausted. When the first roar of McClellan's artillery opened fire in the grey dawn, they hurled their shells against less than thirty-seven thousand men in the Confederate lines. The Union commander had massed eighty-seven thousand tried veterans behind his guns.

The President received the first news of the battle with a thrill of exultation. That Lee's ragged, footsore army hemmed in thus with Antietam Creek on one side and the broad, sweeping Potomac on the other would be crushed and destroyed he could not doubt for a moment.

As the sun rose above the eastern hills a gleaming dull-red ball of blood, the Federal infantry under Hooker swept into action and drove the Confederates from the open field into a dense woods, where they rallied, stood and mowed his men down with deadly aim. Hooker called for aid and General Mansfield rushed his corps into action, falling dead at the head of his men as they deployed in line of battle.

For two hours the sullen conflict raged, blue and grey lines surging in death-locked embrace until the field was strewn with the dead, the dying and the wounded.

Hooker was wounded. Sedgwick's corps swept into the field under a sharp artillery fire and reached the shelter of the woods only to find themselves caught in a trap between two Confederate brigades massed at this point. In the slaughter which followed Sedgwick was wounded and his command was saved from annihilation with the loss of two thousand men.

While this desperate struggle raged in the Union right, the centre was the scene of a still bloodier one. French and Richardson charged the Confederate position with reckless valor. A sunken road lay across the field over which they rushed. For four terrible hours the men in grey held this sunken road until it was piled with their bodies, and when the last charge of the resistless blue lines took it, they found but three hundred living men who had been holding it against the assaults of five thousand--and "Bloody Lane" became immortal in American history.

It was now one o'clock and the men had fought almost continuously since the sun rose. The infantry fire slowly slackened and ceased in the Union right and centre.

Burnside, who held the Union left, was ordered to advance by the capture of the stone bridge over the Antietam. But a single brigade under General Toombs guarding this bridge held an army at bay and it was one o'clock before the bridge was captured.

Burnside now pushed his division up the heights against Sharpsburg to cut Lee's line of retreat. The Confederates held their ground with desperate courage, though outnumbered here three to one. At last the grey lines melted and the men in blue swept triumphantly through the village and on its edge suddenly ran into a line of men clad in their own blue uniform.

They paused in wonder. How had their own men gotten in such a position? They were not left long in doubt. The blue line suddenly blazed with long red waves of flame squarely in their faces. It was Hill's division of Jackson's corps from Harper's Ferry. The ragged men had dressed themselves in good blue suits from the captured Federal storehouse. The shock threw the Union men into confusion and a desperate charge of the strange blue Confederates drove them back through the village, and night fell with its streets still held by Lee's army.

For fourteen hours five hundred pieces of artillery and more than one hundred thousand muskets had thundered and hissed their cries of death. On the hills and valleys lay more than twenty thousand men killed and wounded.

Lee's little army of thirty-seven thousand had been cut to pieces, having lost fourteen thousand. He had but twenty-three thousand left. McClellan had lost twelve thousand, but had seventy-five thousand left. And yet so desperate had been the deadly courage with which the grey tattered army had fought that McClellan lay on his arms for three days.

The day's work had been a drawn battle, but the President's heart was broken as he watched in anguish the withdrawal of Lee's army in safety across the river. It was the last straw. McClellan had been weighed and found wanting. He registered a solemn promise with God that if the great Confederate Commanders succeeded in making good their retreat from this desperate situation he would remove McClellan.

The Confederates withdrew, rallied their shattered forces safely in Virginia, and Jeb Stuart once more rode around the Northern army!

The President issued his Emancipation Proclamation, challenging the South to war to the death, and flung down the gauntlet to his rival, the coming leader of Northern Democracy, George Brinton McClellan, by removing him from command.