This accomplished, it was certain that the Confederates, recrossing the Potomac, would make a fresh stand at the first available point, and safely defy pursuit until the exhausted army of the Union should have had time to reorganize itself for a new campaign of invasion. The battle of Antietam, then, was on the part of the Union forces an offensive-defensive battle, and on the part of the Confederates a defensive-offensive battle. It was the culminating effort of General McClellan to drive from the Northern soil an enemy against whom the government had avowed itself but three weeks before quite powerless to make head. With General Lee, on the contrary, who had had time to choose his position, it was an effort to dispose of the only remaining obstacle in his hitherto victorious progress from Richmond towards Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Under these conditions the action began at daylight on the 17th of September, 1862, with a vigorous assault upon the enemy's left by the right wing of General McClellan's army, which was to have been followed up by a similar assault of the Union left wing upon the right of the Confederates. The centre of the Union lines was held by two divisions of General Porter's corps, the divisions of Generals Sykes and Morell, which had suffered so severely under General Pope in the second battle of Bull Run. These divisions constituted the only real reserves of the army, filled the interval between the right and left wings, and protected the supply trains of the army in the rear. It was of course greatly important that the front of this force should be maintained firmly in any event, and more particularly that it should be so maintained in the event of any failure on the part of either of the Federal wings to make a due impression upon the enemy. The attack of the Federal right began at the hour appointed, and was pushed with promising success. At 8 o'clock General Burnside, commanding on the left, was ordered forward in his turn to carry an important part of the heights on the enemy's right. This order was not obeyed until nearly noon, and its object having been partially achieved, General Burnside halted his advance until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. During this inaction of the left wing the conflict had raged with great fury on the right; several general officers had fallen, and so severe had been the losses of that wing that two brigades of General Porter's corps, already weakened by detachments to the right and rear of Burnside, were ordered up from the centre to reinforce it, at the risk of exposing that vital position to attack. Under repeated orders from General McClellan, General Burnside at length resumed his attack, carried the heights upon the enemy's right and drove his men from their guns. But this advantage, which, had it been won three hours before, might have gone far towards rendering the victory more decisive than there had been any antecedent reason for believing that it could be made, was won too late. The enemy, reinforced just before dusk by Jackson's troops from Harper's Ferry, assailed Burnside in his turn, and forced him back from the crest upon the lower range of hills near the bridge which he had carried at noon. Night, however, closed upon a victory which had saved the North from invasion and the nation from humiliation. Thirteen guns, thirty-nine stand of colors, upwards of fifteen thousand stand of small arms, and more than six thousand prisoners, attested the brilliancy of the triumph-a brilliancy undimmed by the loss of a Federal color or a Federal gun. To renew the attack on the next day, in the then condition of the troops, was pronounced impossible by the corps and divisional commanders, and the Confederates sending in a flag of truce for permission to bury their dead, the permission was granted, and the day spent in preparations for resuming the offensive on the following morning. But during the night of the 18th, Lee, whose position, almost on the river bank, gave him great facility for the manœuvre, evacuated his intrenchments on the Maryland shore and retreated into Virginia. The glorious sun-burst of this victory at Antietam lighted up the whole North. For the moment partisan spite and passion themselves were dumb, and the gratitude of a nation rewarded the gallant soldiers to whom under Providence it owed its escape from a great peril and shame. It is painful to know that this feeling of gratitude was by no means shared by the government at Washington. On the 20th of September General McClellan was obliged, in reply to several captious telegrams from General Halleck, complaining that the administration was "left entirely in the dark as to the movements of the enemy," to say, "I regret that you find it necessary to couch every despatch I have the honor to receive from you, in a spirit of fault-finding, and that you have not yet found leisure to say one word in commendation of the recent achievements of this army, or even to allude to them." This contemptuous indifference to the feelings which make up and maintain the military spirit and the morale of an army was not now for the first time exhibited by the authorities at Washington. One of the greatest of military writers has said, "it is the duty of a prince to reward his men for a fine retreat as highly as for the most brilliant victory; for firmness under reverses is more honorable than enthusiasm under success, since it requires courage only to carry a position, while it demands true heroism to make a difficult retreat in the face of a victorious and enterprising enemy without being disconcerted, and steadily meeting him with a front of iron." Yet to the following telegram, which General McClellan sent to General Halleck just before his return for the Peninsula, no reply was ever made, nor was any notice ever taken of its suggestions: HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. Please say a kind word to my army, that I can repeat to them in general orders, in regard to their conduct at Yorktown, Williamsburgh, West Point, Hanover Court-House, and on the Chickahominy, as well as in regard to the (7) seven days, and the recent retreat. No one has ever said anything to cheer them but myself. Say nothing about me, merely give my men and officers credit for what they have done. It will do you much good, and will strengthen you much with them if you issue a handsome order to them in regard to what they have accomplished. They deserve it. Maj.-Gen. HALLECK, G. B. MCCLELLAN, Comd'g U. S. Army, Washington, D. C. SOMETHING of course must be pardoned to men who, being no more than mortal, found themselves in the humiliating position into which the official superiors of General McClellan had now, by their real inferiority to that officer, been brought. The campaigns of Pope in Virginia, and McClellan in Maryland, had demonstrated this inferiority, not merely to all other competent observers, but to these official superiors themselves. The President and General Halleck knew that but for General McClellan and the army which he alone had been able to hold together, the beginning of September would have seen them fugitives from Washington or prisoners in Richmond: and it would be asking too much, perhaps, of human frailty to find fault with them for a certain degree of restlessness and discomfort in his presence. But that they should have set themselves at work as soon as the safety of the North was assured, to find or make an occasion for depriving its saviour of his command was a crime against the State, the magnitude of which is only to be measured by all that the nation has since been thereby called to bear of loss, of suffering, and of shame. Yet the events which now took place are difficult of explanation upon any other theory than this. Five days after the battle of Antietam the President issued |