196

BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM.

[1862.

easily driven back out of the woods, across the clearing, and into the eastern woods, after which the Confederates retired to their own position. Fighting of this sort went on all the forenoon, one of the episodes being a race between the 5th New Hampshire regiment and a Confederate force for a commanding point of ground, the two marching in parallel lines and firing at each other as they went along. The New Hampshire men got there first.

But while this great struggle was in progress on McClellan's right, his centre and left, under Porter and Burnside, did not make any movement to assist. At noon Franklin arrived from Crampton's Gap, and was sent over to help Hooker and Sumner, being just in time to check a new advance by more troops brought over from the Confederate right.

At eight o'clock in the morning Burnside had been ordered to carry the bridge in his front, cross the stream, and attack the Confederate right. But, though commanded and urged repeatedly, it was one o'clock before he succeeded in doing this, and two more precious hours passed away before he had carried the ridge commanding Sharpsburg and captured the Confederate battery there. Then came up the last division of Lee's forces (A. P. Hill's) from Harper's Ferry, two thousand strong, united with the other forces on his left, and drove Burnside from the crest and re-took the battery. Here ended the battle; not because the day was closed, or any apparent victory had been achieved,

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CONDUCT OF THE BATTLE.

197

but because both sides had been so severely punished that neither was inclined to resume the fight. Every man of Lee's force had been actively engaged, but not more than two thirds of McClellan's. The reason why the Confederate army was not annihilated or captured must be plain to any intelligent reader. It was not because Lee, with his army divided for three days in presence of his enemy, had not invited destruction, nor because the seventy thousand, acting in concert, could not have overwhelmed the forty thousand even when they were united. It was not for any lack of courage, or men, or arms, or opportunity, or daylight. It was simply because the attack was made in driblets, instead of by heavy masses on both wings simultaneously; so that at any point of actual contact Lee was almost always able to present as strong a force as that which assailed him.

The losses on both sides were fully equal to those of Shiloh. Whatever had been the strag gling on the march, none of the commanders complained of any flinching after the fight began. They saw veterans taking, relinquishing, and retaking ground that was soaked with blood and covered with dead; and they saw green regiments "go to their graves like beds." There had been a call for more troops by the National Administration after the battles on the Peninsula, which was responded to with the greatest alacrity, men of all classes rushing to the recruiting-offices to enroll themselves. It was a common thing for a regiment of a thousand men to be raised, equipped,

198

THE LOSSES.

[1862.

and sent to the front in two or three weeks. Some of these new regiments were suddenly introduced to the realities of war at Antietam, and suffered frightfully. For example, the 16th Connecticut, which there fired its muskets for the first time, went in with nine hundred and forty men, and lost four hundred and thirty-two. On the other side, Lawton's Confederate brigade went in with eleven hundred and fifty men, and lost five hundred and fifty-four, including five out of its six regimental commanders, while Hays's lost three hundred and twenty-three out of five hundred and fifty, including every regimental commander and all the staff officers. Three Confederate generals were killed, and eight were wounded. General McClellan reported his entire loss at twelve thousand four hundred and sixty-nine, of whom two thousand and ten were killed. General Lee reported his total loss in the Maryland battles as fifteen hundred and sixty-seven killed and eightyseven hundred and twenty-four wounded, saying nothing of the missing; but the figures given by his division commanders foot up eighteen hundred and forty-two killed, ninety-three hundred and ninety-nine wounded, and twenty-two hundred and ninety-two missing-total, thirteen thousand five hundred and thirty-three. If McClellan's report is correct, even this statement falls short of the truth. He says: "About twenty-seven hundred of the enemy's dead were counted and buried upon the battle-field of Antietam. A portion of their dead had been previously buried by the enemy."

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THE RESULTS.

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If the wounded were in the usual proportion, this would indicate Confederate casualties to the extent of at least fifteen thousand on that field alone. But whatever the exact number may have been, the battle was bloody enough to produce mourning and lamentation from Maine to Louisiana.

Nothing was done on the 18th, and when McClellan determined to renew the attack on the 19th, he found that his enemy had withdrawn from the field and crossed to Virginia by the ford at Shepherdstown. The National commander reported the capture of more than six thousand prisoners, thirteen guns, and thirty-nine battleflags, and that he had not lost a gun or a color. As he was also in possession of the field, where the enemy left all their dead and two thousand of their wounded, and had rendered Lee's invasion fruitless of anything but the prisoners carried off from Harper's Ferry, the victory was his.

CHAPTER XIII.

EMANCIPATION.

THE war had now (September, 1862) been in progress almost a year and a half; and nearly twenty thousand men had been shot dead on the battlefield, and upward of eighty thousand wounded, while an unknown number had died of disease contracted in the service, or been carried away into captivity. The money that had been spent by the United States Government alone amounted to about one billion dollars. All this time there was not an intelligent man in the country but knew the cause of the war; and yet more than a hundred thousand American citizens were killed or mangled before a single blow was delivered directly at that cause. General Frémont had aimed at it; General Hunter had aimed at it; but in each case the arm was struck up by the Administration. One would naturally suppose, from the thoroughness with which the slavery question had been discussed for thirty years, that when the time came for action there would be little doubt or hesitation on either side. On the Confederate side there was neither doubt nor hesitation. On the National side there was both doubt and hesitation; and it took a long time to arrive at a determination to destroy slavery in order to preserve the