In previous columns viewed the Battle of Antietam from the perspective of Federal officers whose troops contended with their Confederate enemies throughout the day in the woods and fields around Sharpsburg. In one of the most famous episodes of the war, Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill’s Division, hastening from Harpers Ferry, arrived on the battlefield late in the day just as the Federals were breaking through the Confederate right. Hill’s attack halted the Union advance and turned what was about to become a disastrous defeat into a tactical draw.
Hill’s Division was not the only Confederate unit that had a long and hurried march to the battlefield. Other components of Lee’s dangerously divided army raced to Sharpsburg from Harpers Ferry and beyond, entering the fight as they arrived, footsore and hungry, to check the Federals’ dawn attack on the Confederate left. In this column we will hear from officers who led the troops in the bloody melee at this end of the line.
Job number one for Lee was to unite his dispersed army.
In his report Brig. Gen. John R. Jones described his division’s
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rush to Sharpsburg. At 7 a.m. on September 15 the Federal force at Harpers Ferry surrendered, “much to the joy of the toil-worn soldiers, who were ready to encounter the enemy again if necessary. At 3 p.m. orders were received to march back to camp and cook two days’ rations and be ready to march. The cooking was complete by 12 o’clock at night,
and at 1 o’clock the march commenced. Reaching the Potomac at sunrise, the division was hurried across and on to Sharpsburg.”
The division was allowed a two-hour rest, then “was again put in motion, and took up its position on the extreme left….”
The men under Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws also had a long march to the battlefield. McLaws’s report went into some detail about the marching and fighting and the final dash to the climactic battle.
“The entire command was very much fatigued. The brigades of Generals Kershaw and Barksdale had been engaged on Maryland Heights on the 12th, 13th, and 14th, and on the 15th had been marched from the heights to the line of battle up the valley, formed to oppose that of the enemy below Crampton’s Gap. Those of Generals Cobb, Semmes, and Mahone…had been engaged and badly crippled at Crampton’s Gap, and all the others had been guarding important points under very trying circumstances. A large number had no provisions, and a great portion had not had time or opportunity to cook what they had. All the troops had been without sleep during the night previous, except while waiting in line for the wagon trains to pass over a pontoon bridge at Harpers Ferry…. [N] otice was sent to me to hasten the troops to Sharpsburg. I…started the command at 3 p.m. Halted after dark…within 2 miles of Shepherdstown, when, receiving orders to hasten forward, commenced the march at 12 o’clock that night, many of the regiments still without provisions.”
There was no time to lose. McLaws’s report continued: “On the morning of the 17th, about sunrise, the head of my column reached the vicinity of General Lee’s headquarters near Sharpsburg.” McLaws located Lee, received orders and moved his brigades into the battle already well underway. McLaws wrote: “I was, of course, entirely ignorant of the ground and the location of the troops [of other commands].”
One of McLaws’s brigade commanders, Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw, described this march and the condition of his men when they arrived at Sharpsburg: “Owing to the exigencies of the service, my command were without their usual supply of subsistence from Monday morning, September 13, until the night of the 17th. They were also under arms or marching nearly the whole of the nights
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of Monday and Tuesday, arriving at Sharpsburg at daylight on Wednesday morning, September 17. As a consequence, many had become exhausted and fallen out on the wayside, and all were worn and jaded.”
Brig. Gen. William Barksdale, commanding another brigade in this division, reached the main Confederate force about 9:00 a.m. “The battle was then, and had been, raging for several hours,” Barksdale wrote, adding that “a portion of my men had fallen by the way from loss of sleep and excessive fatigue, having been constantly on duty for five or six days, and on the march for the whole of the two preceding nights.” Barksdale took 800 men into the fight.
Many weary troops fell out on the way, but much of the division was present in time to advance against Federals who had driven back those troops in line when the struggle began.
The division commanded by Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood was in place earlier, near the Dunker Church, on the afternoon of the 16th. After the division helped slow the Federal advance at Turner’s Gap, Hood’s force served as the rear guard on the 15th and the morning of the 16th as the army fell back to Sharpsburg. In his memoirs Hood described the condition of his men. “My troops…were sorely in need of shoes, clothing and food. We had had issued to us no meat
for several days, and little or no bread; the men had been forced to subsist on green corn and green apples.”
Hood was relieved by three brigades of Brig. Gen. Alexander Lawton’s division. His hungry men retired to their supply wagons and began to cook their rations. As is well known, Hood’s troops had no time to finish their meal. “As the dawn of morning broke upon us,” Hood writes, Lawton sent an urgent message for Hood to come to his support. The Yankees had struck with great force.
One of Lawton’s brigades was led by Brig. Gen. Harry Hays, who reported that of his 550 men engaged at the beginning of this ferocious onslaught, 323 were killed or wounded “in a very short time.” Relieved by Hood, Hays retired. “I then proceeded to gather the remnant of my brigade. When this was accomplished I again moved toward the front.” According to Hood, Hays could rally only 40 men for the renewed effort. The field was covered with the dead and wounded comrades of these few remaining men. “Never before,” Hood wrote, “was I so continuously troubled with fear that my horse would further injure some wounded fellow soldier, lying helpless on the ground.”
The colonel commanding another of Lawton’s brigades was killed in the initial attack. The lieutenant colonel who assumed command was soon wounded. Maj. John H. Lowe then took charge. Like Hays’s men, Lowe’s were forced back in the severe fight, but moved forward again with the reinforcements. Lowe reported that the brigade lost not only its commander and his successor, but “nearly every regiment lost its regimental commander; also the greater portion of the different companies lost their company commanders.”
Let’s now advance with two of Hood’s brigades, relieved earlier for a meal, but called back to battle with their hunger unsatisfied. Colonel William Wofford,
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commanding the Texas brigade, wrote that “at daylight the battle was opened. Our brigade was moved forward, at sunrise, to the support of General Lawton….” One of his regiments “pressed [the enemy] rapidly to their guns, which now poured into them a fire on their right flank, center and left flank from their different batteries, before which their well-formed line was cut down and scattered….” Another of Wofford’s regiments was “in front of the extreme right battery of the enemy…, which now opened upon our thin ranks a most destructive fire.” The Federal infantry also “now opened a furious fire…upon our thinned and almost annihilated ranks.” Wofford was forced to fall back.
Of the 854 officers and men Wofford led into this battle, 560 were killed, wounded or missing. His report named 12 officers killed.
Col. Evander Law commanded another of Hood’s brigades that came forward to support Lawton’s hard-pressed troops. Law wrote that as he advanced he “found but few of our troops on the field and these seemed to be in much confusion, but still opposing the advance of the enemy’s dense masses….”
These fresh troops forced the enemy to “give way before us, though in vastly superior force.” But as Hood’s brigades reinforced Lawton’s, so did fresh Federal brigades come forward. “At this stage of the battle a powerful Federal force (ten times our number)…was thrown in our front. The losses up to this time had been very heavy…; our ammunition was expended; the men had been fighting long and desperately, and were exhausted from want of food and rest.” Law ordered his men to fall back “to the wood from which I had first advanced.”
At this point Confederate reinforcements arrived. We have heard McLaws, Barksdale and Kershaw describing their rush to Sharpsburg. Now we hear what happened after their just-in-time
General McLaws reported that as his division advanced “Just in front of the line was a large body of woods, from which parties of our own troops, of whose command I do not know, were seen retiring, and the enemy, I could see, were advancing rapidly, occupying the place.”
McLaws’s troops checked this Federal advance, “inflicting great loss on the enemy” and driving them “not only through the woods, but over a field in front of the woods, and over two high fences beyond and into another body of woods over half a mile distant.” With no immediate support, some of McLaws’s brigades “fell back into the woods,” but advanced again when additional units came up.
A battery supporting the attack “did most excellent service,” but, McLaws wrote, was ordered to retire “after losing 14 officers and men and 16 horses.” Another battery was “so severely cut up that in a short time by the direct and cross-fires of numerous batteries” that it also was ordered back. The enemy did not attempt another advance but continued to punish McLaws’s troops “with an incessant storm of shot and shell, grape and canister.”
Of 2,893 officers and men carried into action, the division lost 1,093 killed and wounded, and 26 missing. “I could do nothing but defend the position my division had occupied,” McLaws wrote in conclusion.
Barksdale’s report recounted this same bloody back-and-forth through the woods and fields north of Sharpsburg. At 2 p.m.
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Barksdale “occupied the battleground over which we had passed in the morning.”
General Kershaw’s casualty report is very telling of the army’s condition at the start of the day and at the end. One of his regiments, the 8th South Carolina, lost 23 officers and men. This may not sound like a heavy toll, until you consider how small a force the 8th was at the beginning of the battle: the regiment started the day with 26 officers and 45 enlisted men.
Brig. Gen. Paul Semmes, another brigade commander under McLaws, reported his unit’s advance as an “incessant current of wounded flowed to the rear.” In his account “Our troops continued to press steadily forward, pouring a deadly fire into [the enemy’s] ranks, and he, after advancing 100 yards, gave way; and we continued to drive him from position to position, through wood and field for a mile….”
Semmes concluded with an interesting assessment of the Battle of Sharpsburg. “Had it been possible to have strengthened [my brigade] by a supporting force of 2,000 to 3,000 men, there was not then, nor is there now, a doubt in my mind that the enemy’s right, though in vastly superior numbers, would have been driven upon his center and both, in confusion, on his left, utterly routing him. The victory, though decisive, would thus have been rendered signal, and the enemy’s lines broken and dispersed.”
Where these 2,000 or 3,000 men might have come from is unclear, as is the reason for Semmes’s assessment of Sharpsburg as a
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Barksdale’s report concludes without such speculation or assessment. “I close this report,” he wrote, “with the remark that my command did its duty on the ensanguined field of Sharpsburg.”
The horrendous bloodletting on the Confederate left flank ended with both sides exhausted. Heavy fighting in this sector ended by late morning. In Part II we will move to another place on this “ensanguined field.”
Advance and Retreat, by General John Bell Hood; Official Records, Series I, Volume XIX, Part I, reports of Barksdale, Hays, John R. Jones, Law, Lawton, Kershaw, McLaws, Semmes and Wofford.
Maps of the Sharpsburg battlefield can easily be found online. The American Battlefield Trust shows excellent maps at its site, www.battlefields.org. The reader can appreciate the effort McLaws’s and Jones’s divisions made to reach the battlefield from the maps at Wikipedia’s article on the Maryland Campaign.
In the preservation world, we like to tout “win-win” situations. For example, when the May 1 battlefield at Chancellorsville was preserved, preservationists won a major victory because they saved hallowed ground. Developers won a victory because the county gave them zoning concessions on the ground they were still able to build houses on. The county won a victory because it not only benefitted from real estate taxes but also revenue from historical tourism. At first, these various interests seemed as though they were in competition with each other, but in the end, after lots of discussion, compromise, and creative thinking, everyone was able to walk away with a “win.”
Recent events have been tumultuous, but I hope for a similar “win-win” outcome.
At Emerging Civil War, we have a lot of historians with a lot of strong opinions about what’s been going on, particularly in regard to monuments and other aspects of Confederate culture. As an organization, we don’t have a specific stand because we have such a diverse range of individual opinions among our members. We’ve tried to present as many of those perspectives on our blog as possible so that readers have many things to think about and many tools to consider.
One thing we all agree on, though, is that a better understanding of history can help us better navigate these difficult discussions. We know many of our readers agree. I want to thank all of you who have tried to raise public awareness about our national history and how that might better inform us all as we look for ways to address issues such as how to deal with Confederate heritage, how to ensure racial justice, and how to ensure everyone gets equal treatment under the law. There’s a tremendous amount there to unpack, but the more “win-win” scenarios we can find, the better off everyone will be.
ECW is pleased to continue our exciting work with Southern Illinois University Press on our “Engaging the Civil War” Series.
We recently overhauled our editorial board, and we’re pleased to introduce our new line-up of “emerging” scholars: • • • • • • •
You’ve seen the work of many of these folks at ECW already. For Chris Mackowski did a free podcast interview with Zack Fry about Zack’s new book, Republic in the Ranks, which discusses the Army of the Potomac and the political allegiances of the soldiers within its ranks: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37622033.
Chris also did a free podcast interview with Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan Rothera about their new book, The War Went On: Reconsidering the Lives of Civil War Veterans: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37826719.
You can also see Brian’s keynote 2017 Symposium at Stevenson Ridge. He spoke about the battle of South w.c-span.org/video/?431932-4/ battle-south-mountain
JoAnna McDonald has been knocking it out of the park since
Zackery A. Fry, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Belvoir Hilary Green, University of Alabama JoAnna M. McDonald, Emerging Civil War Angela M. Riotto, Army University Press, Fort Leavenworth Evan C. Rothera, University of Arkansas, Fort Smith Nicholas Sacco, National Park Service, U. S. Grant National Historic Site Cecily N. Zander, Pennsylvania State University
instance, Editor-in-Chief
address from the Emerging Civil War
Most recently, Cecily Nelson Zander has contributed several blog posts to ECW since coming aboard:
Nick Sacco contributed an essay in ECW’s Entertaining History book about Grant’s memoirs, which he’s also discussed in an ECW podcast: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2020/02/25/ ecw-podcast-ulysses-s-grant-inmemoir-memory-is-now-available. More recently, we talked with Nick about the Civil War “Zoom boom”: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2020/06/01/thecivil-war-zoom-boom-part-fourulysses-s-grant-national-historicsite.
We’re excited about working with such great emerging voices as we continue forward with this book series. We have a lot of cool projects in the works!
The July 2020 issue of Civil War News includes an article that features Emerging Civil War. The piece, penned by our editor-in-chief, Chris Mackowski, looks at the many different ways the COVID-19 pandemic has affected historians. The article quotes a number of ECW’s historians, who serve as a wide-ranging sample of the Civil War field as a whole.
The blog Civil War Books and Authors published a nice review of the ECW book Entertaining History, part of our “Engaging the Civil War” Series with Southern Illinois University Press. Reviewer Drew Wagenhoffer called it “a thoroughly engaging exploration of the popularization of the Civil War in song and on page and screen.” Check out the review here:
h t t p s: / / c w b a. b l o g s p o t. com/2020/06/review-entertaining-history-civil-war.html
Sarah Bierle took a “social distanced” trip to Kelly’s Ford recently. She says it was great to get out and see some different battlefield land. “I sat by the river and read for a while until some fishermen came up and told me to be careful since there was a water moccasin swimming upriver toward where I was sitting,” she says. “Yikes! I keep having near misses with snakes at historic sites.”
Doug Crenshaw is steadily working on a volume on the Confederate high command during the Seven Days. He and Drew Gruber recently finished
the manuscript for an ECW book on the 1862 Peninsula campaign. Doug and Bert Dunkerly will be hosting a video for the Richmond National Battlefield Park about Richmond’s lesser-known battlefields on August 23. He and Bert will also be doing a video for the park featuring the battle of Glendale on Sept. 13. You can also find Doug leading a Seven Days tour for the American Battlefield Trust on October 24, and he has several speaking engagements lined up for the fall, too, so keep your fingers crossed!
Bert Dunkerly, like many of us, had tours and talks cancelled. He’s had several invitations to do Zoom or other virtual programs, though, and will be doing those for the next few months. He’s also used this time to get out and explore lesser-known historic sites and remote areas of battlefields, where he’s unlikely to run into crowds.
Dwight Hughes was asked to contribute an essay to The Essential Civil War Curriculum, a Sesquicentennial project of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech. The 5,000-word essay, “Unvexed Waters: The Civil War on Heartland Rivers,” has been submitted for review and approval.
Meg Groeling has finally gotten her hair cut! She has been researching and writing essays for an upcoming ECW book on primary sources, which, for her, means more Walt Whitman. She has also been stress-baking loaves and pans of gingerbread. The entire neighborhood has gotten gifts, although she didn’t check the trash to see if any ended up there. “Like everyone else, I’m worried about the state of the country,” she admits. “At this point, I’ll take thoughts & prayers.”
Chris Kolakowski is pleased and proud to have helped tell the story of the Battle of Algiers, 1942, part of the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, in the new documentary Shadows of Freedom, just released on several platforms. Find it here:
Chris also has a new article out in Army History on “Merrill’s Marauders” in north Burma during World War II.
Brian Matthew Jordan is an
