Location: Sharpsburg, MD Map
Antietam National Battlefield is situated in Sharpsburg, Maryland
in the USA. This site became known as a single worst loss of
life in a single day in a confrontation between the Union forces
of the North and Confederate forces of the South. It was fought
on September 17, 1862, and resulted in 3617 killed on both sides
and over 18,000 wounded.
Army of Northern Virginia under
command of Robert E Lee took Sharpsburg, Maryland along the
Potomac River on September 16th, 1862. Here they faced a Union
Army under command of Major General George B. McClellan. It is
hard to guess why Confederate chose this location. Potomac River
at the back of Lee was technically a death trap if the ranks
broke and soldiers tried to retreat. First attacks of the battle
started on September 16th. Minor skirmishes were initiated by
the Union forces along Antietam Creek under command of Major
General Joseph Hooker. With the sunset shots went silent.
In the second calendar year of the American Civil War, much of the
Union (Northern) effort in the important eastern theater continued
to focus on capturing and occupying Richmond. The fall of their
capital in Virginia, just 100 miles (160 kilometers) as the crow
flies from Washington, would, it was hoped in the North, inflict a
devastating blow on the Confederacy (Southern states), cause the
government of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to collapse
and trigger the secession of the Confederacy, which was viewed as
a "rebellion." make the south null and void. To achieve these war
goals, however, the Union had to go on the offensive, while the
Confederates could limit themselves to defending their own
territory.
An obstacle on the way to Richmond was a series
of smaller and larger rivers that ran parallel to the Virginia
border between it and the capital of the Confederacy. The first
attempts to conquer Richmond had failed in the previous year with
Union defeats in the First Battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861) and
in the Battle of Balls Bluff on the Potomac (October 21, 1861).
Since then, General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army,
stationed between Manassas and Centreville, had been able to
prevent the Union's vastly superior Army of the Potomac from
advancing into Virginia. The result was a stalemate that bothered
the North more than the South.
Major General George B.
McClellan, commander in chief of the Army of the Potomac, had
demonstrated his organizational talent between the summer of 1861
and early 1862, transforming a defeated army into a
well-structured army with renewed self-confidence. The press
therefore dubbed him the “Young Napoleon”. In fact, he was a
procrastinator and perfectionist who shied away from taking risks
and - even when confronted with clearly inferior units -
constantly pushed for further reinforcements of his own troops and
better preparations before their deployment. McClellan tended to
overestimate the enemy's numerical strength (often by a multiple)
and use the miscalculation to justify his lack of initiative. This
made him vulnerable to attacks from political opponents, who
sometimes even assumed he had sympathies for the Southern cause.
The charismatic general was still very popular with his troops. As
briefly commander-in-chief of the US Army in the winter of 1861/2,
McClellan achieved a series of successes in other theaters of war,
even if his personal contribution to them was small. In the west,
the Union captured the Confederate forts of Fort Henry (February
6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 16) in Tennessee, thereby
controlling for the first time important tributaries to the
Mississippi, a possible route of entry into the South. The fall of
Nashville (February 25) further consolidated the Union's position.
Between February and April, an expeditionary army also managed to
capture most of the Confederate ports on the North Carolina coast.
The attempt by several Confederate armies to stop the Union
from advancing further into Tennessee ended in defeat at the
Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7), the most costly battle of the Civil
War to that point. Union armies then captured Corinth, a railroad
hub in northern Mississippi (April 30). The fall of Confederate
positions and towns along the Mississippi River such as Island No.
10 (April 7), New Orleans (April 24), Baton Rouge (May 9), and
Natchez (May 12) completed the series of Union military successes
in the winter and spring of 1862. This development made the
disappointments of 1861 forgotten and renewed the hope from the
beginning of the Civil War that the southern rebellion could be
ended within a few weeks. At the same time, the voices of
pessimists were increasing in the southern states. Confederate
Vice President Stephens stated privately as early as February
1862:
““The Confederacy is lost.”“
Urged by Union President Abraham Lincoln to go on the offensive,
General McClellan devised a plan in early 1862 to bypass
Johnston's supposedly superior force and Virginia's waterways. To
do this, his army was to be transported by ship across the
Chesapeake Bay to the east coast of the state and from there march
on the capital of the Confederacy. Lincoln agreed to the plan,
although he would have preferred McClellan to attack Johnston's
army near Washington at Bull Run instead of taking direct action
against Richmond.
McClellan's campaign began on March 17
with the landing of the first units of the 120,000-man Army of the
Potomac at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula, about 100 kilometers
from Richmond. The Union advance quickly came to a halt with the
month-long siege of Yorktown (beginning April 5). This gave
Johnston enough time to withdraw his force, now known as the Army
of Northern Virginia, to protect Richmond. Only after a Union
victory at Williamsburg (May 5) was the Army of the Potomac able
to advance further. Richmond now seemed seriously threatened.
Johnston's attempt to stop McClellan with an attack eight
kilometers from the city failed due to the indecisive outcome of
the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31 - June 1), in which Johnston was
also seriously wounded.
Command of the Army of Northern
Virginia now passed to General Robert E. Lee. He had served as
military advisor to President Davis since March 1862 and helped
plan Major General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's Shenandoah
Campaign, which brought the first notable Confederate successes in
1862. McClellan expected Lee to be defensive, but Lee decided to
attack the Union Army. Almost all of the fighting in the seven-day
battle that followed (June 25-July 1) resulted from attacks by the
numerically inferior Confederates. Although Lee's complex attack
plans mostly failed and his army suffered heavy losses, McClellan
was impressed by the enemy's varied offensive. He withdrew his
troops to the James River, where they remained idle for the
remainder of July.
McClellan demanded reinforcements from
Washington to counterattack the supposedly 200,000-man Army of
Northern Virginia - a threefold overestimation of its size. As he
continued to escalate his demands, the exasperated Henry Wager
Halleck, the new commander in chief of the US Army, ordered the
withdrawal from the peninsula at the beginning of August.
McClellan should unite his Army of the Potomac, which still has
90,000 men, as quickly as possible with the 40,000-man Virginia
Army under Major General John Pope, which had now advanced into
northern Virginia. Lincoln had only had the new major Union unit
formed and stationed on the Potomac in June because he saw the
city of Washington as inadequately protected due to McClellan's
campaign. The reluctant McClellan was unsure whether he or Pope
would command the combined army. Therefore, he secretly hoped that
his competitor would be defeated by several divisions that Lee had
sent under the command of Jackson to fight the Army of Virginia.
Meanwhile, McClellan took his time shipping his own army back.
Jackson scored his first success against part of Pope's troops
at the Battle of Cedar Mountain on August 9th. With McClellan's
army looming, Lee left 22,000 men to defend Richmond and rushed to
Jackson's aid with the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia. He
was determined to use his 55,000 men to provoke Pope into battle
before his Army of Virginia could unite with the entire Army of
the Potomac. Sent by Lee to disrupt Union supply lines, Jackson's
divisions looted and destroyed a large Union camp at Manassas
Junction on August 27. Pope now decided to confront Jackson with
the expected reinforcements of four divisions from the Army of the
Potomac and two divisions withdrawn from North Carolina before he
could reunite his troops with Lees. However, not least due to
Pope's confused leadership of units from three armies that had
never fought together, the Union troops suffered a humiliating
defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28-30) and were
forced to retreat via Maryland to Washington. Despite Halleck's
orders to the contrary, McClellan had prevented further ready
divisions of the Army of the Potomac from coming to Pope's aid.
The change in the military situation between March and August 1862
was dramatic. While the Union had hoped in the spring to be able
to end the war quickly, both major Union units in the eastern
theater of war suffered severe defeats in the summer. The failure
of the Peninsula Campaign was repeatedly compared to Napoleon's
fiasco in Russia. The Union also experienced setbacks in the
western theater of war in the summer of 1862, although these were
not as momentous. The Army of Northern Virginia, strengthened
under its new commander-in-chief Lee, also threatened to advance
into the northern states for the first time and even attack
Washington, Baltimore or Philadelphia. While new confidence
prevailed in the southern states after months of mostly depressing
news from the battlefields, in the Union states the certainty of
victory turned into astonished horror and sometimes panic.
Domestic political differences intensified in the north, also
because congressional elections were due in the fall. The “War
Democrats,” i.e. those members of the Democratic Party who
fundamentally approved of the war but criticized the stance of the
ruling Republicans as too intransigent, found themselves in a
conflict. They attacked Lincoln because McClellan, himself a
Democrat, had not received the reinforcements he had requested.
Many Republicans and supporting newspapers such as the New York
Times, for their part, questioned McClellan's portrayal of the
balance of power on the peninsula and accused the
commander-in-chief of the Army of the Potomac of a lack of will to
fight, too gentle treatment of the civilian population in
Virginia, or even treason given his behavior towards Pope . The
criticism was shared by some leading officers in the Army of the
Potomac.
Although President Lincoln was deeply angered by
McClellan's inaction since the Seven Days' Battle, he resisted
appeals from his cabinet to dismiss the general or even bring him
before a war tribunal. Instead, in early September, he asked
McClellan to continue to lead the Army of the Potomac, united with
the troops of the deposed Pope, and to protect the city of
Washington from the feared siege by Lee. Lincoln responded to
strong opposition from his ministers with the words: McClellan has
the army with him [...and] we must use the tools we have tools we
have.) The doubts about McClellan's loyalty were exaggerated, but
he actually disapproved of the harsh war policy of radical
Republicans, whom he assumed had excessive influence over the
despised Lincoln. Like almost all Democrats, McClellan was
primarily opposed to turning the war for national unity into a
fight against slavery in the southern states. With his help, the
general's supporters spread rumors that effective military
leadership and thus an early victory with few casualties and
without humiliation for the Confederates were being sabotaged by
men like Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton until the more radical
war goals could be implemented by the public.
Personally,
Lincoln viewed slavery as a moral evil. In the first year of his
term in office, however, he opposed the demands of prominent
abolitionists and individual party members to make the freeing of
slaves in the South a war goal. Above all, the president feared
that this would lead to the secession of the four slave states
that had remained loyal to the Union: the border states of
Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri. On the other hand, the
exploitation of slave labor played an important role in the
South's war economy. The practice of treating runaway or captured
slaves from the southern states as spoils of war that did not have
to be returned to their “owners” became established early on in
the Union Army. The Republican-dominated Congress approved this
procedure through a law on March 13, 1862. Over the summer of
1862, increased Confederate resistance led Lincoln to believe that
the old union of slave and non-slave states could not be restored.
The final abolition of slavery should become the basis of a new
union and the southern states should be forced to accept it by all
means available - including harsher treatment of civilians. In
making this policy change, the president was determined to ignore
opposing advice from military leaders like McClellan and from
representatives of the Union's slave states (which he sought to
persuade to voluntarily abandon slavery). On July 22, Lincoln told
his astonished Cabinet that he had moved to issue a proclamation
for the emancipation of slaves in the Confederate states (although
not in the Union states), based on his rights as
commander-in-chief in time of war. Almost all ministers supported
the change of course, but Secretary of State William H. Seward
warned of the possible diplomatic consequences. There is
speculation in Europe that, given the recent setbacks, the Union
must place all its hopes in an uprising by slaves in the southern
states. Therefore, before a major military victory for the Union,
an Emancipation Proclamation might be viewed as “the last measure
of an exhausted government, a cry for help,” “our last cry in
retreat.” …] our last shreik [sic] on the retreat.).In view of
Seward's warning, Lincoln decided to postpone the Emancipation
Proclamation for the time being. Only the victorious outcome of
the Battle of Antietam two months later provided the opportunity
to publish it.
The Union's recent defeats threatened to have serious foreign
policy consequences for the United States in the summer and fall
of 1862. Since the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederacy
hoped that its independence would be recognized by the major
European powers Great Britain and France and even their subsequent
military intervention on behalf of the South. The textile
industries of both countries, which had officially declared their
neutrality, were dependent on cotton imports from the southern
states and the Confederates early on organized a unilateral export
embargo to exert economic pressure on the Europeans. In Britain,
many political leaders felt connected to the “aristocratic”
lifestyle of southern plantation owners, but viewed the slave
economy as a blight that stood in the way of recognition. On the
other hand, it was pointed out that the Union had not officially
made the abolition of slavery a war goal, so this was not a
mandatory prerequisite for establishing diplomatic relations with
the Confederacy.
In Europe, people were skeptical as to
whether the Union could succeed in militarily subjugating the vast
territory of the southern states, but they were reluctant to take
sides early. Emperor Napoleon III. was inclined towards
recognition from the start, but only wanted to act in agreement
with the British government in this regard. In London, Prime
Minister Palmerston made it clear as early as 1861 that the
Confederacy could only expect recognition if it had proven its
ability to survive through victories on the battlefields. Charles
Francis Adams, Lincoln's ambassador to London, repeatedly warned
his government of the dramatic consequences of further Union
defeats. The worsening cotton crisis and the successes of Jackson
and Lee in the Shenandoah Valley and off Richmond actually renewed
appeals for southern recognition in Europe in the summer of 1862.
President Lincoln, who considered the western theater of war to be
more important than the eastern, expressed his displeasure at what
he believed to be distorted perceptions of the war situation
abroad. In a debate on July 17, the British Parliament was only
dissuaded from calling for a peace agreement based on a division
of the USA through an intervention by the Prime Minister. However,
Palmerston himself changed his stance shortly afterwards. On
August 6, he wrote to Queen Victoria urging Britain to propose a
ceasefire soon. On September 24 (before news of the Battle of
Antietam had reached London) he agreed with Secretary of State
John Russell to launch an initiative with France for a negotiated
peace between northern and southern states in October. If
Washington rejected this, London would unilaterally recognize the
Confederacy.
After the Second Battle of Bull Run, war-stressed Northern
Virginia offered no resources to sustain the victorious
Confederate troops for any length of time. General Lee's only
option was to withdraw his army into the Shenandoah Valley or into
interior Virginia or to lead it across the Potomac to Maryland, a
Union territory. In a letter to Jefferson Davis on September 3,
1862, Lee advocated the latter option and, fully expecting a
positive response from the President, began crossing the border
river with his army the following day. The longer the war lasted,
Lee believed, the more the Union's structural advantages, such as
the larger population and the presence of modern industry, would
come into play. Therefore, the Confederate army must strike a
decisive blow before it is too late. Lee knew that politicians and
newspapers in Virginia had long advocated bringing the war north.
In addition to the psychological aspect of demonstrating the
viability of the Confederacy to the Union and European powers, he
also expected concrete political results from continuing his
offensive: He hoped that the population of the slave state of
Maryland would see his troops as liberators from the “yoke of the
North.” welcome and able-bodied men to join the Army of Northern
Virginia. To promote this, Lee had his troops sing the propaganda
song Maryland, My Maryland (sung to the tune of "O Tannenbaum") as
they marched, calling on the state's people to join the
Confederacy. Lee also speculated that the incursion in the North
could weaken the Republicans' position in electing "Peace
Democrats," also known as "Copperheads," to Congress who are
increasingly calling for an end to the war promote and thus
prepare for an amicable dissolution of the Union. If the campaign
was successful, an advance into Pennsylvania would be possible,
where Lee intended to destroy an important railroad bridge over
the Susquehanna in order to cut the line of communication to the
western theater of war. Meanwhile, a Confederate campaign in the
north would prevent a new Union invasion of Virginia and allow the
expansion of defensive lines there and the undisturbed harvesting
of crops. Because of the strong numerical superiority of the Army
of the Potomac, which had retreated to Washington, Lee did not
plan the siege of the Union capital that the North feared.
The hope that the Army of Northern Virginia would have support in
Maryland soon proved deceptive. In the west of the state, where
the advance took place, there were few slaves and the population
(often of German origin) was largely unionist. The appearance of
Lee's army did nothing to change this attitude. After months of
marches and battles, the soldiers were starved and covered in
dirt, their uniforms tattered, and often they didn't even wear
shoes. Eating unripe corn and fruit from Maryland's fields and
gardens caused repulsive diarrhea in many men. The condition of
the Army of Northern Virginia was so poor that within a week
almost a fifth of the soldiers (10,000 out of 55,000) deserted to
fight their way back to Virginia. A contributing factor was that
many Confederate soldiers supported the defense of their homeland
but rejected an offensive in the north. Draconian punishments
could only partially stop the bloodletting. Looting also served to
turn Marylanders against the Confederates. The pitiful appearance
of Lee's army became a popular topic among commentators and
cartoonists in the North. Meanwhile, on the Union side, Lincoln’s
trust in McClellan paid off – at least briefly. The general, who
remained popular with the troops, managed to reorganize the Union
forces in a limited amount of time, incorporate the divisions
defeated at Bull Run into the Army of the Potomac and prepare them
for a campaign again. On September 7, just ten days after Bull
Run, the first of McClellan's units left Washington to face the
Army of Northern Virginia. The initially subdued mood in the ranks
was lifted by the friendly, sometimes enthusiastic welcome from
the people of Maryland, which had not been expected. Previously,
the Army of the Potomac had operated primarily in enemy territory,
and support from the local population was a new experience for
most Union soldiers.
The Army of Northern Virginia's advance into Maryland isolated two
locations in western Virginia with important Union garrisons:
Harpers Ferry (with 10,500 soldiers) at the mouth of the
Shenandoah and the Potomac, and Martinsburg (with 2,500 soldiers)
further west. McClellan wanted the garrison to vacate the bases
and join the Army of the Potomac, a move that Lee expected.
However, Army Commander-in-Chief Halleck forbade the evacuation.
Lee then decided to attack the Union garrisons in the rear of his
army, also because he hoped to capture large quantities of food
and equipment in Harpers Ferry.
On September 9, Lee issued
his “Special Order No. 191” in Frederick, breaking his army into
four parts. Three divisions under “Stonewall” Jackson were to make
a wide arc over Martinsburg and attack Harpers Ferry from the
west. Divisions under Major General Lafayette McLaws and Brigadier
General John George Walker were to take the hills east (in
Maryland) and south of the town (in Virginia) and bombard the
garrison from there with artillery. Lee wanted to hold the
position in Maryland with the remaining units west of Frederick
between Hagerstown and the South Mountain range. According to
Lee's optimistic planning, the four army units were supposed to
join together again after just three days. As was often the case,
Lee took a big risk by dividing a weaker army. However, he trusted
McClellan's timidity in recent months and assumed that the Army of
the Potomac would not be operational again for three to four
weeks.
However, McClellan's army reached Frederick on the
morning of September 13th, three days after Lee's departure, and
was enthusiastically celebrated by the locals. Shortly after
arriving, a sergeant resting outside the town came across a copy
of Lee's "Special Order No. 191" addressed to Confederate Major
General D. H. Hill, which had been wrapped as wrapping paper
around three cigars and left carelessly lying on the grass. The
importance and authenticity of the paper were soon recognized and
“Lee's Lost Orders” were brought to McClellan. The
commander-in-chief of the Army of the Potomac was presented with a
unique opportunity: if he got his army moving quickly enough, it
would be possible to engage and defeat the different parts of
Lee's army separately. In a telegram to President Lincoln,
McClellan announced: “I have the plans of the rebels, and will
catch them in their own trap.”
McClellan, who acted
hesitantly, allowed 18 hours to pass before he set his army in
motion. Lee also learned from an informant from Major General
J.E.B. Stuart, the commander of his cavalry, soon heard of unusual
activity at McClellan's headquarters. He now expected an advance
towards the three passes on South Mountain. He had enough time to
reinforce the Confederate positions there so that in the battles
at South Mountain on September 14th, the advance of two Union
corps could be held off until nightfall. The VI only succeeded at
the southern pass. Union Corps under Major General William B.
Franklin made the breakthrough in the afternoon.
The Army
of Northern Virginia lost nearly a quarter of its soldiers on
South Mountain who were not at Harpers Ferry. The losses were so
great and the prospect of being able to continue defending the
remaining passes was so slim that Lee decided to break off the
Maryland campaign on the evening of September 14th and to cross
the Potomac to Virginia the following day near the small town of
Sharpsburg cross over. McClellan telegraphed to Washington that
his army had won a glorious victory and that the Confederates were
retreating in panic. Lincoln responded on September 15: “God bless
you and all who are with you. If possible, destroy the rebel
army.” (“God bless you, and all with you. Destroy the rebel army,
if possible.”)
Franklin was unable to complete McClellan's
mission to come to the aid of the threatened garrison at Harpers
Ferry due to his slow approach. The crew surrendered to Jackson on
the morning of September 15, three days later than Lee had
estimated. It was the largest surrender of Union troops during the
Civil War. Jackson's “prey” also included at least 500 people who
had escaped from slavery and were now taken back to the South.
Meanwhile, a Union cavalry unit that had managed to break out of
Harpers Ferry on September 14th fell into the hands of a large
amount of Confederate ammunition supplies, which they then brought
to safety in Pennsylvania.
General Lee and his troops reached Sharpsburg early on the morning
of September 15th. There he received a late message from Jackson
mentioning the impending fall of Harpers Ferry. Lee immediately
changed his attitude to retreat from Maryland and decided to
engage the Army of the Potomac at Sharpsburg. He trusted that the
other Confederate units could march there in time. Lee set up his
headquarters in a tent west of town and placed his troops in a
line about four miles long on a ridge east of Sharpsburg, where
the Army of the Potomac was expected to approach. A tree-lined
river, the Antietam, which runs in a winding north-south
direction, would act as a natural obstacle to the advance of the
Union soldiers. However, in some places the Antietam was only
about 18 meters wide, partly shallow and wadeable, and was crossed
by three stone bridges, each 1.5 kilometers apart.
The
hills provided a favorable, if not perfect, defensive position.
Southwest of Sharpsburg, steep slopes with good defensive
positions stretched close to Antietam. To the north-east of the
town the terrain opened up, the hills became flatter and fields
and meadows stretched all the way to Antietam, which, apart from a
few woods in between, guaranteed a clear field of fire. Along
Confederate lines, fences, limestone outcroppings, and natural or
man-made depressions in the terrain provided cover for soldiers.
There was also a well-developed road to the west of the positions,
the Hagerstown Turnpike, which could be used to move troops if
necessary.
Despite these generally favorable topographical
conditions, Lee took a great risk at Sharpsburg. The Potomac
flowed behind his army and there was little room to maneuver. In
addition, in the event of a retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia
would have had only one ford available - Boteler's Ford on the way
to Shepherdstown, Virginia, southwest of Sharpsburg. However, to
save his Maryland campaign, Lee was willing to take another risk.
Lee learned of the fall of Harpers Ferry, 12 miles south of
Sharpsburg, around noon on September 15th. He hoped that Jackson's
divisions would now move quickly to reinforce the weakened main
force of the Army of Northern Virginia. Initially, however, Lee
had only two divisions at Sharpsburg under the command of Major
General James Longstreet and the division of Major General D.H.
Hill available - a total of around 18,000 men. Lee countered his
officers' concerns that with this number of troops they would be
hopelessly outnumbered by the Army of the Potomac, which was more
than three times as strong, with the prediction that the cautious
McClellan would not attack before the start of the day after next.
Lee was proven right. Although an advance guard of the Army of
the Potomac reached the Sharpsburg area on the afternoon of
September 15, it took all of the following day for McClellan's
leisurely troops to take up positions on Antietam. Around noon on
September 16, the first Confederate troops that had taken part in
the Siege of Harpers Ferry began to arrive in Sharpsburg. At this
point, the 69,000 Union soldiers located within 10 kilometers east
of Sharpsburg were opposed by only 25,000 Confederates. However,
McClellan assumed that Lee could have three times as many
soldiers.
McClellan moved into the home of the wealthy
farmer Phillip Pry, which was located on a hill east of the
Antietam, as his headquarters. From here he could survey the
northern and central parts of the later battlefield using
telescopes. He intended to maintain contact with his commanders
with the help of flag signals that were to be transmitted from a
wooden tower. McClellan spent most of September 16 preparing an
attack for the following morning, but he failed to adequately
reconnoitre the Army of Northern Virginia's positions and was
unaware of Lee's weakness. McClellan also personally attended to
the details of supply transport and troop deployment, wasting more
precious time.
General McClellan intended to strike the main blow on the left
flank of the Army of Northern Virginia, northeast of Sharpsburg.
The Confederate positions on the ridge here turned in a westerly
loop toward the Potomac, and this gave Union troops enough room to
cross the Antietam and advance in the open terrain between creeks
and hills. Four divisions of the I Corps of the Army of the
Potomac under Major General Joseph Hooker and two divisions of the
XII Corps were to attack. Corps under Brigadier General Joseph K.
Mansfield. The three divisions of the II Corps under Major General
Edwin V. Sumner had to stand ready east of the Antietam to support
the attackers if necessary.
At the same time, the four
divisions of the IX. Corps under Major General Ambrose E. Burnside
attacked the Confederate right flank in the south in order to
distract from the main strike in the north. McClellan expected
Burnside's troops to advance across the Antietam and, if possible,
evade the Army of Northern Virginia in a wing movement and block
Lee's possible retreat route across the Potomac at Boteler's Ford.
McClellan paid little attention to the center of the Confederate
positions in front of Sharpsburg, where the central stone bridge
was within range of enemy artillery and therefore difficult to
cross. The three divisions of the V Corps under Major General Fitz
John Porter were to stand in reserve east of the Antietam to
attack in the event of a breakthrough by Union troops to the north
or south of the battlefield. McClellan assigned the same function
to the three divisions of the VI. Corps under Major General
Franklin, which was scheduled to arrive at Antietam on September
16th, as well as the cavalry division under Brigadier General
Alfred Pleasonton, which belonged to Mansfield's corps.
McClellan's battle plan was, on the whole, well thought out, but
required coordination of operations at the corps and division
levels, which did not occur. McClellan was personally responsible
for this. In contrast to General Lee, he mostly stayed near his
headquarters, far away from the battle, and was therefore only
able to react belatedly to events on the ground. Instead of
sticking with the usual division of the Army of the Potomac into
three wings, he changed the command structure two days before the
battle so that all corps commanders had to report to him
personally, but did not have to coordinate their operations with
each other even when they deployed their troops the same part of
the battlefield. Rivalries among Union generals allegedly
motivated the new structure. The problem was exacerbated because
McClellan issued only individual orders, but not a general order
explaining the context of all operations.
The lack of
coordination meant that more than 20,000 Union soldiers were never
deployed at the same time in the Battle of Antietam and Lee always
had enough time to relocate his own troops to repel attacks.
20,000 Union soldiers, more than a quarter of the 75,000
available, were not used in combat at all. McClellan's keeping
Pleasonton's cavalry division in reserve in the center and not
using it to recon and secure his flanks proved to be another
serious omission.
Because of these structural and tactical
errors, the Union's two-to-one superiority in the battle was
almost completely eliminated. McClellan's caution resulted - as so
often - from the miscalculation of the troops available to Lee at
Antietam. Union officers estimated the strength of the Army of
Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg at up to 130,000 men.
On McClellan's orders, Hooker's I Corps crossed the Antietam at
about 4 o'clock on the afternoon of September 16th. To do this,
the troops used the northern stone bridge and nearby fords that
were beyond the range of Confederate artillery. Actually, only the
positions for the upcoming attack were supposed to be taken, but
Brigadier General George G. Meade's division met advanced
Confederate troops under Brigadier General John B. Hood in a small
forest (referred to as "East Woods" on military maps) on the
northeastern edge of the later battlefield . A fierce exchange of
fire followed, in which artillery was also used. There were losses
on both sides. As darkness fell, the fighting subsided, but
artillery fire continued to cover the advance of McClellan's army.
The battle gave the Union no advantage, but it did reveal to Lee
where to expect McClellan's attack that morning and where
positions needed to be reinforced. McClellan also continued the
preparations for the attack during the night and around midnight
he ordered the XII. Corps under Mansfield also to cross the
Antietam to support Hooker's corps.
Both commanders ordered
the division commanders remaining in the Harpers Ferry area to
quickly march their troops to Sharpsburg. Lee's orders went to
Major General McLaws, Major General Richard H. Anderson and Major
General A.P. Hill, whose Light Division was still in Harpers Ferry
to guard captured Union soldiers and secure the loot they had
taken. McClellan ordered Major General Franklin to bring in two of
his three divisions. The arrival of all reinforcements by the
following afternoon meant that the Army of the Potomac would have
to face Lee's entire Army of Northern Virginia, no more than
40,000 men strong, on September 17, even though the Union's
numerical advantage was still 2:1. McClellan had missed his second
chance to deal a devastating blow to Lee's divided army on
September 16. Troops on both sides spent a restless night, marred
by occasional exchanges of fire and light drizzle. Meanwhile, the
approximately 1,300 residents of Sharpsburg tried to get
themselves and their property to safety. Many found shelter in the
basements of their homes or in a large cave on the Potomac.
Farmers did what they could to move livestock away from areas
where fighting threatened the next day.
The actual Battle of Antietam began at dawn on September 17 around
5:30 a.m., when General Hooker's I Corps advanced to the
Confederate left flank, where the bulk of Jackson's II Corps was
at the level of another grove (West Woods). distributed. From
there, the Confederate positions extended in an arc into the
terrain beyond the Hagerstown Turnpike. At this point, Jackson had
around 7,700 men at his disposal and Hooker had around 1,000 more
men. The Union attack came from northern and northeastern
positions along the Hagerstown Turnpike and targeted a Southern
artillery position located on a plateau east of that route. West
of the Hagerstown Turnpike, there was a small church nearby that
was built by the pietistic and pacifist sect of the Dunkers (=
Anabaptists, from the German Tunker) who came from Germany. On the
morning of the attack, ground fog made it difficult for Union
soldiers to see, but the white-painted church building stood out
well from the surrounding area, marking the direction in which the
Army of the Potomac would attack. As the Union troops advanced,
Confederate horse artillery under J. E. B. Stuart opened fire.
Union batteries located on a ridge on the northern edge of the
battlefield fired back. The first fighting broke out in front of
the eastern grove, where a Confederate brigade was able to push
back several Union regiments. Most of the terrain between the
Union troops and the Confederate positions was occupied by pasture
land. However, right in the middle, north of the plateau, was an
8-hectare cornfield in which the stalks were more than man-high.
As the Union troops advanced, they discovered through bayonet
points flashing in the sun that Confederate soldiers were hiding
inside. Hooker ordered the advance to be halted and four batteries
to bombard this confusing section of the front. The artillery and
rifle fire from both sides that developed was so intense that the
cornfield was mowed down as if with a scythe. Hooker later wrote
in his report:
“…every stalk of corn in the northern and
greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been
done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had
stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune
to witness a more bloody, dismal battle-field.… “
The Union
troops now advanced along a line about 800 meters long. Fierce
exchanges of fire broke out again in front of the eastern grove,
where a Union brigade fought its way into the cornfield but was
unable to break the resistance of an outnumbered Confederate
brigade from Georgia. The Union troops also encountered bitter
resistance on their right flank, but were able to gain ground in
the western forest and in the cornfield and gradually approached
the plateau. The Hagerstown Turnpike was flanked by wooden gates,
some of which were tall, which could be used as cover, but which
also exposed soldiers as they climbed over them, making them easy
targets for snipers. Since there was fierce fighting over the area
on both sides of the path that morning, the gates became a deadly
trap for many soldiers.
Union soldiers had already advanced
close to the plateau south of the cornfield when Jackson's
thrown-back troops were reinforced by General John B. Hood's
division. She had been held in reserve by Jackson because the
soldiers were exhausted after the fighting the previous evening
and should have rested. Hood's men were reportedly angry and
particularly motivated to fight the Union Army because their
mission had forced them to interrupt their first hot breakfast in
days. They were able to push the enemy troops back through the
corn field, but suffered heavy losses in the process. The
division's 1st Texas Regiment lost 82% of its soldiers in just 30
minutes. Nevertheless, the advance of Hood's division saved the
left flank of the Army of Northern Virginia from collapse. The
attack by Hooker's I Corps came to a halt.
McClellan had
failed to stop Hooker's attack by the two divisions of the nearby
XII Corps. Corps supported by Mansfield. When the XII. Corps
finally entered the battle from the eastern grove around 7:30
a.m., Hooker's troops were already too exhausted for the Union to
gain a decisive advantage. There was enough time left for General
Lee to counter the Union's second wave of attacks by sending three
new divisions. Nevertheless, the XII. Corps to drive Hood's troops
out of the cornfield again and a Union brigade was even able to
take the Confederate batteries on the plateau near Dunker Church
during the attack.
Meanwhile, however, Mansfield had been
fatally wounded. Hooker was also hit in the foot by a Confederate
sniper's bullet and had to be carried off the battlefield. The
loss of the two commanding generals on the northern sector of the
front unsettled the Union troops and the brigade on the plateau
withdrew from the western grove after heavy counterfire from the
Confederates. Command of I Corps now passed to Brigadier General
Meade, command of XII Corps. Corps under Brigadier General Alpheus
S. Williams. After three and a half hours of fighting, at 9 a.m.,
over 8,000 men on the northern sector of the front were already
dead, wounded or missing, without either side having gained any
significant advantage.
McClellan had initially held back
the three divisions of the II Corps of the Army of the Potomac
under Major General Sumner far east of the fighting near his
headquarters. It was not until 7:20 a.m. that he sent two of
Sumner's divisions forward to the battlefield, where they did not
arrive until an hour and a half later. Without coordinating his
actions with Meade and Williams, around 9 a.m. Sumner ordered his
two divisions, commanded by Major General John Sedgwick and
Brigadier General William Henry French, to attack the Confederate
left flank again. The operation was so hasty that French's
division was lost in the advance at the eastern grove. Apparently
disoriented as to where to direct his troops, French ordered a
left turn to avoid the plateau to the south. He inadvertently led
his men to the central Confederate positions in front of
Sharpsburg, where no fighting had yet taken place.
This
left Sumner with only the 5,400 men of Sedgwick's division for his
attack. These were able to advance almost unhindered over the corn
field and Hagerstown Turnpike. However, the apparent retreat of
the Confederates turned out to be a trap, because Jackson's
troops, which had again been joined by fresh divisions, fired at
the Union soldiers from three sides simultaneously as they reached
the western grove. Because Union soldiers in the rear ranks feared
hitting their own comrades, they became targets without being able
to return fire. After less than half an hour, Sedgwick's division
had to retreat. It suffered over 2,000 dead, wounded and missing
people. Among those seriously wounded was the young Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr., who would later become a Supreme Court justice. A
subsequent Confederate counterattack on the meadows in front of
the western grove was met with Union artillery fire and had to be
broken off. The last major battles on the northern part of the
battlefield occurred around 10 a.m. when two regiments of the XII.
The Union Corps again tried to implement Hooker's original plan
and advanced from the eastern grove towards the plateau and Dunker
Church. The attack stalled due to Confederate resistance and a
lack of reinforcements, but the Union troops made minor gains
between the cornfield and the western grove.
This ended the
first phase of the battle after four hours with more than 12,000
casualties, including two Union commanding generals. Five Union
and four Confederate divisions were so badly damaged that they
were no longer able to intervene in the rest of the war that day.
McClellan's plan to roll up the left flank of the Army of Northern
Virginia had failed. Since the attack by the Union troops did not
occur in one massive blow but rather successively, the strong
numerical superiority of the Army of the Potomac was never fully
exploited on this part of the battlefield. The result was a series
of costly battles over a relatively small area of land that
ultimately ended in a stalemate. According to eyewitness reports,
the area of the cornfield alone had changed hands fifteen times
that morning.
In the meantime, fighting had also broken out at the center of the
Confederate positions in front of Sharpsburg, triggered not by
McClellan's order to attack, but by Brigadier General French's
error. When his division encountered Confederate skirmishers on a
farm southeast of Dunker Church, he decided to take the fight
there. Shortly after 9:30 a.m. he received a message from Major
General Sumner, who informed French of the debacle of the Union
troops at the western grove and ordered an attack in front of
Sharpsburg to force the Confederates to withdraw troops from the
north of the battlefield.
The center of the Army of
Northern Virginia's positions was under the command of Major
General Longstreet. The defense was weak because troops had been
moved to reinforce Jackson's corps during the morning. Since then,
the five brigades of Major General D. H. Hill's division held the
position; three of them had already suffered casualties during the
morning's fighting. The best defensive position was held by two
brigades, entrenched 100 yards behind a ridge on a dirt road that
curved between Hagerstown Turnpike and Boonsboro Road. Erosion and
truck traffic had formed it into a deep ravine (called Sunken Road
by local residents) that formed a natural trench. No artillery was
positioned on this section of the front.[
French hoped for
an element of surprise as he ordered his division up the hill to
Sunken Road. This failed because the entrenched Confederates,
seasoned veterans, anticipated the attack and patiently held fire
until the enemy got into a position at the crest of the hill where
they could be easily hit. The leading Union brigade under
Brigadier General Max Weber, which consisted mainly of German
immigrants without much combat experience, suffered particularly
heavy losses. She lost 450 men in just five minutes. A subsequent
charge by Colonel Dwight Morris' similarly inexperienced Second
Brigade was also repelled. French now sent his last and best
brigade into battle, but it too failed in its attempt to advance
to the Sunken Road. In less than an hour, French's division had
lost almost a third of its soldiers on the hill.
Meanwhile,
the Confederate brigades on Sunken Road received reinforcements on
the right from Major General Anderson's division. Emboldened by
this, the Confederates were preparing for a flank attack down the
hill at about 10:30 a.m. when the last of Sumner's divisions,
under the command of Maj. Gen. Israel B. Richardson, arrived on
the scene. McClellan had held them off while the rest of Sumner's
corps marched to the battlefield and did not send them off until 9
a.m. Richardson ordered another attack, but the famous Irish
Brigade was also wiped out without reaching the Sunken Road. It
was now midday and the defense of four consecutive frontal attacks
by the Union had also taken a heavy toll on the defenders on
Sunken Road. Anderson had been seriously wounded early on (he died
from his injury four weeks later), and no one took command, so his
division was of little help. The middle of the defensive line was
particularly weakened, where the ravine made a sharp bend and the
natural trench was so narrow that the Confederates were often hit
by ricochet bullets that ricocheted off the rear embankment.
When Confederate Brigadier General Robert E. Rodes gave orders
to redeploy troops during the Union's fifth attack to strengthen
the center, a regimental commander misunderstood him and ordered a
retreat from Sunken Road. The brigade's four remaining regiments
joined the action, which turned into a wild rout, without Rodes
being able to do anything about the collapse of the defensive
line. The advancing Union soldiers then took the Sunken Road and
captured 300 Confederates. In many places along the ravine, the
dead were now lying two or three on top of each other. As the
Union troops regrouped on the Sunken Road, they were attacked from
the north by two Confederate regiments, but they suffered heavy
losses in the action and were forced to retreat. While French's
division secured the Sunken Road, Richardson's advanced toward the
new Confederate defense line, located less than 300 yards
southwest on farmer Henry Piper's property. Meanwhile, Major
General D.H. Hill gathered the remnants of his division and they
attacked the Union troops in a cornfield on the Piper farm.
Although the weakened unit's advance was doomed to failure, it
bought General Longstreet time to consolidate the Confederate line
in front of Sharpsburg by massing guns; their fire halted the
Union advance. At this point, Longstreet no longer had intact
infantry at his disposal. The remaining units were each hardly
larger than a few hundred men and some of them no longer had any
ammunition.
Reluctantly, due to Confederate artillery fire,
Richardson withdrew his division, which had already lost over
1,000 men, to the hill north of Sunken Road. Here the requested
guns were expected to arrive in order to be able to eliminate
Longstreet's artillery, but they received only inadequate cannons
that were unable to reach the Confederate positions. While
discussing the situation with a battery commander, Richardson was
seriously wounded by a bullet fragment at about 1 a.m. and
transported to McClellan's headquarters at the Pry House, where he
succumbed to his injuries six weeks later. Brigadier General
Winfield Scott Hancock eventually took command, but in the
meantime another good opportunity to break through the Confederate
line, which was on the verge of dissolution, passed. In three and
a half hours, over five and a half thousand men had fallen, been
wounded or were missing in the immediate vicinity of the only 700
meter long section of the front on Sunken Road. Losses amounted to
nearly 2,600 Confederate men and nearly 3,000 Union soldiers. The
carnage earned the Sunken Road a new name, Bloody Lane. Despite
its heavy losses, the Army of the Potomac had gained an advantage
in the center of the Confederate positions before Sharpsburg. In
addition, McClellan had two fresh corps at his disposal that could
be used to attack the Army of Northern Virginia: the V Corps under
Porter including the Pleasonton Cavalry Division, a total of
13,800 men, and the 12,000-man VI Corps. Union Corps under Major
General Franklin, which had arrived at Antietam around midday from
Harpers Ferry and, on McClellan's orders, was now securing the
Union line in the north. Franklin wanted to launch a new attack at
the western grove around 1 a.m., but was held back by the older
and more senior corps commander Sumner, who was shocked by the
incredible toll of the previous battles. According to Sumner's
reasoning, another setback would endanger the entire right flank
of the Union. McClellan initially leaned toward Franklin's point
of view, but changed his mind after consulting with both officers
on the scene. He gave instructions not to make any further attacks
in the north and center of the battlefield.
Southeast of Sharpsburg, Major General Burnside's IX Corps was
supposed to wait for an order from McClellan before beginning what
was intended to be a feint attack. However, when the order from
headquarters finally reached Burnside around 10 a.m., the fighting
on the northern sector of the front had already subsided and the
company's original goal had become obsolete. However, Burnside
apparently still assumed that he was responsible for a
diversionary maneuver that did not need to be tackled with full
force. He did not understand (or was not told) that his troops now
bore the brunt of the Union attack. Burnside's 13,000 soldiers now
faced fewer than 4,000 Confederates, the latter mainly in
positions spread over a hill in front of Sharpsburg that later
became known as Cemetery Hill. Lee had withdrawn a division and an
additional brigade from his right flank to repel Union attacks in
the northern and central sectors of the front. Due to insufficient
reconnaissance of the area, Burnside - in contrast to McClellan's
experts the day before - had not discovered a nearby ford that
would have allowed Union infantry a comparatively easy crossing of
the Antietam. Therefore, Burnside concentrated on capturing
Rohrbach's Bridge, a nearly 130-foot-long, 12-foot-wide,
three-arched stone bridge and the southernmost crossing of the
Antietam near Sharpsburg. It was defended by 550 forward snipers
from Georgia under the command of Brigadier General Robert A.
Toombs.
They spread out along the Antietam River, firing on
the bridge from the safety of ledges, stone walls, and trees.
Before the attack on the Stone Bridge began, Burnside sent three
brigades to cross a ford a kilometer to the south that McClellan's
scouts had also spotted the previous day. However, when the troops
reached the designated spot, they discovered that the embankment
there was too steep. The men fought their way further southwest
through dense bushes in a lengthy maneuver and finally reached
Snavely's Ford, where a crossing was possible.
It was now
midday and the Confederates had already repelled two attacks on
the stone bridge. McClellan lost patience and ordered Burnside to
take the bridge, even at the cost of heavy losses. The third
attack began around 12:30 p.m. and units of the IX succeeded.
After about half an hour, the Corps managed to establish itself at
the eastern end of the bridge. The Georgia snipers ran out of
ammunition and news reached Toombs from the southern flank that
the Union units had crossed Snavely's Ford. The defenders of the
Stone Bridge then retreated towards Sharpsburg. Burnside's troops
had been held up for three hours by a unit twenty times
outnumbered and, at 500 men, had suffered more than three times as
many casualties as Toombs' Georgians. The right flank of Lee's
army was now in severe distress. Three of Burnside's divisions
threatened to attack General Longstreet's weakened troops. But the
approach of fresh units of the IX. Corps, which had remained at
some distance from the bridge, transporting supplies of ammunition
and crossing the narrow bridge proved to be lengthy operations
that cost Burnside two valuable hours (a ford now discovered north
of the bridge remained unused). McClellan's anger at these delays
was directed at Burnside. He sent several couriers to urge his
general to take more forceful action. The slowness of the Army of
the Potomac gave General Lee enough time to shift troops and
artillery from the other sectors of the front, where fighting had
now ceased, to his right flank. The Confederates briefly even
considered a relief attack to the north of the battlefield, led by
Stuart's cavalry. However, Jackson called off the operation in
view of the massive superiority of the Union artillery. After an
eight-hour forced march from Harpers Ferry, the Hills Light
Division finally arrived at Sharpsburg around 2:30 a.m., much to
Lee's relief. She had crossed the Potomac through Boteler's Ford,
which remained open. Hill's men were ordered to reinforce
Longstreet's troops.
With the Union IX Corps regrouping at
the bridgehead on the west side of the Antietam, Burnside launched
a two-wing attack on the Confederate right flank with 8,000 men
around 3 a.m. The advance was initially successful and the
defenders retreated towards Sharpsburg. The town itself was in
chaos, with many wounded being carried through the streets, scores
of scattered soldiers whose units had been wiped out, and Union
artillery shelling that damaged a number of buildings so badly
that they later had to be demolished. With the intervention of
Hill's Division's 3,000 men in the battle, the tide turned around
3:40 a.m. The Army of Northern Virginia was able to counterattack
and the extreme left flank of the Union IX Corps came into great
danger. Confusion arose among Northerners because many of Hill's
men were wearing Union blue uniforms that had fallen into their
hands at Harpers Ferry. Burnside, disconcerted by the unexpected
turn of events in the battle, withdrew his troops to Antietam.
Although he had twice as many men as the enemy in the field, he
was worried that they would not be able to hold the bridge that
had been fought for with so much effort. He asked McClellan to
send promised reinforcements that morning. But McClellan's fears
had renewed that Lee still had unimagined powers. Afraid of the
risk of running his reserves into a massive counterattack by the
Army of Northern Virginia, McClellan Burnside sent only one
battery.
The fact that McClellan's fears were far from
reality did not go unnoticed by a battalion of the Union's V
Corps, which was held in reserve. In a push across the middle
stone bridge on Boonsboro Road, the men discovered the
vulnerability of the middle defenses near Sharpsburg. Brigadier
General George Sykes, who commanded the 2nd Division of the V
Corps, pushed for permission to lead his men across the bridge
into battle to assist Burnside. McClellan, who already seemed
convinced of the proposal, abandoned it after consulting Corps
Commander Porter. Porter's remark is recorded from this
conversation: “General, remember, I command the last reserve of
the last Army of the Republic!” (Remember, General! I command the
last reserve of the last Army of the Republic.) The Northern
Virginia Army had been saved by the timely arrival of A. P. Hill's
Light Division. The IX. Corps of the Army of the Potomac had no
other task than to secure the stone bridge on the Antietam, which
had been captured with heavy losses. Because of what happened that
day, the structure was later renamed Burnside Bridge (Burnside
Bridge or Burnside's Bridge).
Casualties in the Battle of Antietam were heavy on both sides. For
the Union, 2,100 soldiers had fallen and 9,550 were wounded; 750
Union soldiers were considered missing or had been taken prisoner.
The Confederates had 1,550 soldiers killed and 7,750 wounded;
1,020 were missing or taken prisoner. The dead or mortally wounded
included six generals, three each from the Union and the
Confederacy. In the days and weeks following the battle, at least
2,000 wounded men died from their injuries.
To this day,
September 17, 1862 is considered “the bloodiest single day in
American history.” More Americans died on Antietam in a single day
than in any previous or subsequent military conflict US
involvement was the case. The number of killed and injured at
Sharpsburg was four times higher than the number of American
casualties on D-Day during the Normandy landings in 1944. More
American soldiers died on the battlefield at Antietam than in any
other war of the 19th century century taken together.
General McClellan wrote to Washington the morning after the battle
that fighting would probably resume that day. However, even then
he made no move to put this into practice, rather he waited for
Lee to act. The agreement of a ceasefire with the Confederates to
recover the wounded signaled that there would be no further
fighting on September 18. With up to 13,000 reinforcements who
arrived that day and his 20,000 soldiers who had not been deployed
the day before, McClellan would have had more fresh forces at his
disposal for a new offensive than Lee even had soldiers left in
the field. In addition, there were the 30,000 Union soldiers who
had remained uninjured during their combat mission the previous
day. McClellan's decision not to continue the attacks, later
widely criticized, was in keeping with the sentiments of most
officers and soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. Lee, for his
part, did not initially withdraw his troops despite the adverse
circumstances after a battle in which they came close to defeat
several times.
Instead, he even considered attempting an
attack on September 18th. It was not until the night of September
19th that the Army of Northern Virginia began its retreat to
Virginia via Boteler's Ford. McClellan initially sent a brigade
for violent reconnaissance and, on September 20, a few regiments
from Porter's V Corps followed. However, the troops deployed were
too weak to achieve anything. The Confederates were victorious in
the Battle of Shepherdstown (September 19-20). Lee originally
wanted to resume the campaign after a short stay in Virginia, but
informed President Davis on September 25 that the state of his
army did not allow this.
Because of the Confederate
withdrawal, it fell to the Union to treat the wounded and bury the
dead from both sides. In the wide area around Sharpsburg, private
houses, barns and stables were converted into auxiliary hospitals,
where the local population also lent a hand. Funeral parties made
up of Union soldiers took over the task of burying the dead. They
worked until September 24th. Since work had to be done in great
haste, many of the mass graves were not dug particularly deep.
Confederate soldiers passing Sharpsburg the following summer
during the Gettysburg Campaign observed numerous carcasses whose
graves had been washed out by rain or dug up by pigs.
There is widespread agreement among historians that the Battle of
Antietam was one of the turning points of the American Civil War,
perhaps even the most momentous. James M. McPherson summarizes the
political and military consequences of the event as follows:
“The Union victory at Antietam, limited as it was, ended the
South's military momentum, prevented foreign recognition of the
Confederacy, reversed a catastrophic decline in the will to fight
among soldiers and civilians in the North, and gave Lincoln the
opportunity to publish a declaration of emancipation. In a war
with several important turning points, the Battle of Antietam was
the key moment for the most important of all.”
– James
McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam
Lincoln had waited tensely for two months for a Union military
success and thus for the opportunity to publish the Emancipation
Proclamation that had been quietly prepared. In a Cabinet meeting
on September 22, the President indicated that he viewed the
outcome of the encounter at Sharpsburg as a divine sign for
action, even if no devastating blow had been achieved against the
rebels. He announced the immediate publication of a preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation. The Confederate states would then have
until the end of the year to rejoin the Union, otherwise the
slaves in these states would be “forever free” from January 1,
1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation was enthusiastically
received by abolitionists such as Horace Greeley and Frederick
Douglass. The former slave Douglass summarized his feelings in the
words: “We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous
decree.” Some abolitionists criticized that The slaves in the
border states of the Union were not affected, but the majority
recognized that Lincoln could only decide on “enemy property” and
not on the property of the people of Union states. The
Emancipation Proclamation was met with almost unanimous rejection
by the Democrats. Protests also arose in the border states, but
this no longer impressed Lincoln. There was great resistance in
the ranks of the Army of the Potomac, especially among McClellan's
followers, who accused the president of wanting to provoke a slave
rebellion in the South. McClellan viewed this as a nefarious
strategy. The grumbling among his subordinates was so strong that
McClellan had to issue a general order to address rumors of an
impending military coup. In it, he explained that the only
antidote to political error was to vote the right way at the polls
- a clear attempt to sway public opinion in favor of the Democrats
during the election campaign.
The main issues for the
Democrats in the election campaign were the Emancipation
Proclamation and the partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus
provisions of the Constitution (also announced by Lincoln after
Antietam). The partial repeal allowed the government to try
radical opponents of new recruitment for the Union Army, which had
been decided after the failure of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign,
before military courts. If there was agreement on these points in
rejection, the dispute between “war democrats” and “peace
democrats” affected the party’s credibility. The Republicans took
advantage of this in the election campaign and exaggerated the
influence of the “Peace Democrats” within the party. The
elections, which took place between September and November,
ultimately brought Democrats gains in the House of Representatives
and states but losses in the Senate. The Republicans retained the
majority in both chambers of Congress - an important prerequisite
for the continuation of Lincoln's war policy. The Battle of
Antietam had influenced the mood of the electorate in favor of the
Republicans. Before September 17, a Democratic majority in the new
House of Representatives was widely expected.
The Battle of Antietam undermined the British government's
intention to undertake a mediation initiative with the prospect of
subsequent recognition of the Confederacy. Prime Minister
Palmerston wrote to Foreign Minister Russell at the beginning of
October that they would wait until the war situation became
clearer. A few weeks later it became clearer. The defeats of the
South had clouded the prospect of successful mediation for the
time being and he was now convinced “that we only have to remain
in the role of spectators until the war has taken a more decisive
turn.”(“[…] that we must continue “Only to be on-lookers until the
war shall have taken a more decided turn.”)
France
attempted to gain the support of the British and Russian
governments for a proposal for a six-month armistice in which the
Union's naval blockade of Confederate ports could be lifted and
cotton exports could resume, but the governments of both countries
rejected this. In a letter to the Belgian King Leopold I, who also
advocated mediation, Palmerston explained in mid-November that the
previously expected opportunity for such an undertaking had not
arisen due to the Confederates' military setbacks. The
pro-Confederate part of the British public, especially The Times,
condemned the Emancipation Proclamation as a cynical measure by
Lincoln, which was not based on outrage over slavery, but was
intended as a political maneuver to mislead foreign countries and
incite the slaves into a bloody uprising. Pro-Unionist forces in
Britain objected to this and recognized a serious move by Lincoln
to abolish the abhorred slavery. When the final text of the
Emancipation Proclamation included a passage calling on freed
slaves to renounce violence, support for the Union grew in Britain
and other European countries. Lincoln's move had morally
legitimized the North's war aims. As a result, recognition of the
Confederacy was no longer seriously considered in Europe. Henry
Adams, the son of the American ambassador, wrote home from London
on January 23, 1863: "The Emancipation Proclamation has done more
for us here than all our previous victories and all our
diplomacy." “here than all our former victories and all our
diplomacy”).
Two days after the fighting ended, photographer Alexander Gardner
began capturing the horrific aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.
During two stays in Sharpsburg, he took around 90 photos of the
town, the battlefield and living and dead soldiers, around 70 of
them using stereoscopy, which was intended to give the viewer a
three-dimensional impression. The photos were presented in October
1862 at a widely attended exhibition in the studio of Gardner's
employer Mathew B. Brady in New York and were subsequently
reproduced as an attraction for stereo viewing devices. For
technical reasons, newspapers and magazines could not yet
reproduce photos, but Harper's Weekly magazine used them as a
template for illustrations. In particular, Gardner's harrowing
images of mutilated and bloated corpses were a novelty in Civil
War documentation. Although the dead depicted were almost
exclusively fallen Confederates (probably out of fear that images
of dead Union soldiers could reduce support for the war in the
North), the public perception of the battle, which had previously
been romanticized, changed as a result.
The Battle of
Antietam, unlike most battles of the Civil War, was fought in just
one day. Losses were higher in six other encounters that took
place in one location and lasted several days: Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Shiloh and Stones
River. With the exception of Shiloh, these encounters occurred
after the Battle of Antietam. Nevertheless, in the memories of
many participants who were able to make comparisons, Antietam was
considered the worst battle of the Civil War. The battles for
Cornfield, Bloody Lane and Burnside Bridge in particular
epitomized the high toll that soldiers on both sides had to pay in
this conflict. The Northern press celebrated the result of the
battle, the Confederate withdrawal from Maryland, as a great Union
success, the first real victory in the Eastern theater. Less than
three weeks after Bull Run, public perception of the fortunes of
the war had fundamentally changed again. After a series of
failures and bloody defeats, the Union ranks at Antietam had not
collapsed. Rather, the North had repulsed the Confederate invasion
and seemingly seized the initiative. Although there was occasional
criticism from journalists and within the ranks of the Army of the
Potomac over the failure to destroy Lee's army, the morale of the
Union soldiers noticeably improved. Conversely, the Confederacy
largely viewed the rapid termination of the Maryland campaign as a
defeat. The newspapers tried to counteract the pessimism and
emphasized Jackson's success in Harpers Ferry. This harmonized
with the perception of many Confederate soldiers, who emphasized
that they had not been defeated, but rather had intimidated the
Union army into refraining from resuming fighting at Antietam.
However, individual participants in the Maryland campaign
acknowledged their disappointment that the Confederate attempt to
go on the offensive had failed. General Lee himself was
dissatisfied with the indiscipline shown by many of his soldiers
in Maryland, but did not make his reservations public. Public
anger in the southern states was particularly drawn by the
residents of Maryland, who did not live up to the southern
expectations of them. The disappointment was soon repeated in
Kentucky, where the Confederates also tried in vain to drive the
population into rebellion against the Union.
In the weeks
following the battle, the Army of the Potomac remained idle in its
camps, despite good weather and growing press discontent over the
failure to exploit the advantage gained at Antietam. The Potomac
was only crossed to recapture Harpers Ferry. Lincoln urged
McClellan to attack Lee's army, which was still in northern
Virginia, but was unsuccessful. During an extended visit to
Sharpsburg in early October, the president renewed his call for a
vigorous offensive against Lee's army in dialogue with McClellan
and received evasive answers from the general. Lincoln's
displeasure with McClellan increased in view of a spectacular and
successful raid that Lee's cavalry carried out between October
12th and 14th. J.E.B. Stuart managed to advance into Pennsylvania
with 1,800 men, take extensive booty there and, in the process,
encircle the entire Army of the Potomac without the Union cavalry
intervening. The Confederates lost only two men in the commando
operation. In mid-October, in several letters expressing his
growing anger, the president rejected McClellan's flimsy
justifications for not pursuing Lee across the Potomac. A letter
from Lincoln on October 13 said: “Are you not over-cautious when
you assume that you cannot do something that the enemy constantly
can do?” The enemy is constantly doing?") Army Commander-in-Chief
Halleck summed up his frustration with the Army of the Potomac's
inaction in the following words: "There is a standstill here that
exceeds anything a human being can imagine. You need Archimedes’
lever to set this inert mass in motion.”
It wasn't until
October 26 that McClellan's army followed Lee across the Potomac,
but the operation took nine days - compared to the few hours it
took the Army of Northern Virginia after the Battle of Antietam.
Lee was not impressed by the Union superiority and divided his
weaker army as usual: Jackson's corps was to threaten McClellan's
flank from the Shenandoah Valley, and Longsstreet's corps was to
protect Richmond. The Army of the Potomac's timid advance in view
of this constellation finally convinced Lincoln of McClellan's
unwillingness to attack the enemy. On November 9, Lincoln deposed
McClellan as commander-in-chief of the Army of the Potomac. He had
waited until the congressional elections were over to make the
move. McClellan was reluctantly replaced by Major General
Burnside, who would prove he was not up to the task at the Battle
of Fredericksburg a month later. McClellan rejected calls from
officers and troops to march on Washington to overthrow Lincoln
and initially retreated into private life. He never set foot on a
battlefield again after that. As a Democratic opponent of Lincoln
in the presidential election of 1864, he was unsuccessful. In
later writings, in which he justified his strategic decisions with
increasing stubbornness, McClellan reiterated his belief that he
had personally saved the Union and won a great victory at Antietam
in September 1862. Most Civil War historians, however, emphasize
not the Union's successes in Maryland (such as the fact that it
would take Lee nine months before he could operate in Union
territory again), but rather McClellan's missed opportunities to
finally defeat the Army of Northern Virginia and so on to shorten
the war. A. Wilson Greene takes the dominant view when he writes:
“Between September 13 and 18, 1862, George McClellan squandered
the best opportunity ever to destroy the Confederacy's most
important field army. The nation paid the price of his failure
during 31 additional months of civil war." Between September 13
and 18, 1862, George McClellan discarded the best opportunity ever
offered to destroy the Confederacy's principal field army. The
nation met the price of his failure during thirty-one additional
months of Civil War.”)