McClellan's headquarters with positive orders to push across the bridge and to move rapidly upon the heights; to carry the bridge at the point of the bayonet, if necessary, and not stop for loss of life, as sacrifices must be made in favor of success."

The Second Maryland and Sixth New Hampshire troops, in column, charged upon the bridge. Instantly the west bank was a sheet of flame. The head of the charging column melted away, and the troops fell back

under cover of the ridge on the eastern bank. It was one o'clock before Burnside was ready for a second attack. Then the Fifty-first New York, Fifty-first Pennsylvania, Thirty-fifth and Twenty-first Massachusetts, and Seventh Connecticut rushed upon the bridge, carried it, drove Toombs from the stone quarry and walls, and the divisions, one by one, crossed the stream and deployed along the western bank.

There had been a fearful sacrifice of life. After the bridge had been carried a large portion of the troops forded the stream, which they might have done during the attack, if such an order had been issued.

At three o'clock the whole Ninth Corps advanced. Jackson and Hood were sending men upon the run southward to help Longstreet to resist Burnside's attack. It is a critical moment with Lee, but his heart is cheered by the arrival of A. P. Hill from Harper's Ferry. His soldiers go on the run across the fields. They have marched seventeen miles in seven hours. The brigades of Pender and Brockenbrough hold the ex-' treme right. Then come the brigades of Branch, Gregg, and Archer, joining Toombs and D. R. Jones. From three o'clock till late in the afternoon the battle rages in the fields south of Sharpsburg.

Burnside almost reaches the town, but his left flank, Rodman's division, is exposed. A. P. Hill attacks it sharply, and the troops fall back towards the Antietam.

The sun is going down, red and large as seen through the murky battle cloud. One of the Union batteries from my position seems to be in the sun. All of the Confederate cannon are in play. The whole landscape is flaming and smoking, but as darkness comes on the flashes cease, the thunder dies away. Groping my way amid the bivouac fires and along the lines, I come upon a group of soldiers who have eaten their supper of hard bread, and are whiling the hours away with song and story. Tender thoughts come as they think of comrades who never more will march with them or stand by their side in battle, and thoughts of loved. ones far away. This the song I hear:

"Do they miss me at home? do they miss me?
"Twould be an assurance most dear

To know at this moment some loved one
Were saying, 'I wish he were here."

With the rising

Through the night the troops rested on their arms. of the sun on the 18th the cannonade began. General Couch's division had arrived. McClellan had twenty-five thousand troops that had taken no part in the battle, yet no orders were issued to renew the struggle. He had eighty thousand men, and more troops were on their way.

"Whether to renew the attack on the 18th or to defer it, even with the risk of the enemy's retirement, was a question with me," says General McClellan. He decided to wait. He believed that Lee had one hundred thousand, but at no time during the battle of the 17th were there fifty thousand Confederates on the field.

A white flag came out from the Confederate lines asking for an armistice to gather up the wounded between the two armies. It was granted. I walked over the field in front of the Dunker church, where

the conflict had been so fierce. The dead were there in blue and gray. Upon the breast of one in blue lay a pocket Bible, open at the Psalms. Looking at the page, I read, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Upon the fly-leaf the sentence, written, doubtless, by a loving mother, "We hope and pray that you may be permitted by a kind Providence, after the war is over, to return "-a prayer never to be granted. The son had given his life to his country.

The day passed, neither army renewing the attack; but through the night the Union pickets could hear the tramping of feet, the rumble of cannon-wheels growing fainter in the distance, and mistrusted what the morning revealed that the Confederates were retreating. When the sun rose once more not a Confederate was to be seen; all were south of the Potomac. McClellan gave orders for the army to advance. The various corps pushed on to Sharpsburg. General Porter's corps hurried down to the Potomac, forded the river, and formed on the southern shore, but found itself confronted by the Confederate artillery. The soldiers advanced, but were driven with great loss. When they could have done great good they were not used; when they were used they could accomplish nothing. So the great battle was fruitless of results.

The Union army has greatly outnumbered the Confederate, but it has attacked by divisions and frittered away its strength; has lost between twelve and thirteen thousand in killed and wounded. How great the Confederate loss was will never be known. General Lee estimated the number at less than eleven thousand; but from the crossing of the Potomac at Frederick to the recrossing after the battle, nearly twenty thou sand had been lost from his ranks.

Riding up the hill-side to the sunken road, I came upon the line of men who had gone down under the onslaught of French and Richardson, lying as the grass lies in the swathe of the mowers. They were in rows, like the ties of a railroad, in heaps like sticks of wood. The hot blast which had flamed in their faces had shrivelled Hill's lines as the simoom blasts the verdure of the forest. There were prostrate forms which in the full vigor of life had gone down with resolution and energy still lingering on their pallid cheeks. There was one with a cartridge between his thumb and finger, the end bitten off, and the paper between his teeth, when the fatal bullet pierced his heart, and all the machinery of life came to an instant stand-still. A young lieutenant had fallen while trying to rally his men, his resolute energy was still on his face. In the cornfield beyond, fourteen Confederate dead were lying in a heap, the

stalks and broad green leaves trampled and stained with the crimson lifeflood.

By the Hagerstown Turnpike the body of a Confederate sharp-shooter was hanging on the limb of a tree. He had climbed into it for a commanding position, and had been picked off by a Union soldier. The horses of a Confederate battery had gone down in a heap in the public square in Sharpsburg.

General McClellan was there. The troops were passing through the town. The complacent look which illuminated his countenance on the day of battle was no longer there. Those who had cheered him when he rode along the lines in front of Muma's burning buildings no longer swung their hats. That Lee had escaped when he might have been crushed was the manifest conviction. The unexplained inaction of the 18th had brought about a marked change of sentiment among men and officers alike towards General McClellan.

WE

CHAPTER XIV.

INVASION OF KENTUCKY.

E have followed the Army of the Potomac during the summer of 1862, and now turn towards the west to see what the armies in that section of the country have been doing.

The battle of Pittsburg Landing was fought in April. In June the Confederate army under Beauregard retreated to Tupelo, in Mississippi, where Beauregard was succeeded by General Bragg.

On the Union side, General Halleck, who had commanded all the Union armies west of the Alleghanies, was called to Washington and made general-in-chief. He made the mistake of dividing the army which had fought the battle of Pittsburg Landing, and scattering it in detachments all the way from Memphis to Chattanooga. The army under General Grant, which had fought during the first day at Pittsburg Landing, held the country between Memphis and the little town of Iuka, twenty-five miles east of Corinth, on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. The army under General Buell was farther east. Opening the map, we see Huntsville, in Alabama, a very pretty place, north of the Tennessee, where Buell's right wing was stationed. It is one hundred miles from Iuka. Going east from Huntsville in a straight line sixty miles, we come to the little hamlet of Jasper, north of Chattanooga, where we find the left wing of his army. Some of the divisions are at Dechard. Buell is obliged to receive his supplies either from Memphis or Nashville, where there are depots filled with flour, beef, and pork.

The army is not so large as it was in June, for the time of the soldiers. who enlisted for a year has expired. They have gone home, and their places have not been filled by new recruits.

General Bragg planned a movement of the Confederate army from Tupelo to Chattanooga. The troops went in the cars south to Mobile, then north the entire length of Alabama to Chattanooga. The wagons moved across the country. By this movement he was in a position to strike General Buell's left flank.