How fast did the news travel? How accurate were the reports in the press? What did Northern readers know during the middle of September 1862, as Lee’s forces marched from place to place in western Maryland, and McClellan followed, in the days leading up to the great battle of September 17? What did they know, in the days that followed, of the battle and its aftermath?
We can read any number of books and articles about the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg, written decades after the events. Historians have been able to study official reports, memoirs, correspondence and other sources, sift through the data, and craft comprehensive and comprehensible accounts of these events.
That is now. How about then, as these events were unfolding? To find out, I picked a daily, the Philadelphia Press, and examined several issues. Most of what follows comes from the editions published from Monday, September 15 Saturday, September 20. In this column I will try to answer three
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questions. What did the readers know? When did they know it? What did they know that wasn’t so?
The August 28-30 Confederate victory at Second Manassas, or Bull Run, opened the way for Lee’s invasion of Maryland. However, the early reports in the Press presented the action on the old 1861 battleground as a resounding Federal victory.
Well, this was something the readers knew that just wasn’t so. Soon the Philadelphia paper was writing that Lee had crossed the Potomac and was marching about in the Old Line State; that Pope had been sent west to battle the Sioux; and that McClellan, back in charge in the East, was pursuing Lee. Let’s now look at the news the week of the battle.
By Monday, Pennsylvanians were well aware that Lee was in Maryland in force and that their own state was threatened. The bank headlines on page one of that day’s edition summarized the situation. The main rebel army was at Boonsboro, Md.; Confederate pickets extended to the Pennsylvania border; Longstreet and 10,000 men were at Hagerstown; a four-hour battle had been fought south of Hagerstown; and Jackson was
at Williamsport with a force of 16,000.
As was always the case in this era, the editors relied on dispatches written at different places and times. The news conveyed on Monday was based on six dispatches, the earliest sent from Chambersburg the previous Friday and the most recent from Harrisburg at 11 p.m. on Saturday.
The Monday paper also ran an article taken from the Saturday Baltimore American, which reported a Confederate attack on Harpers Ferry that was “repulsed with great slaughter.” According to this account, the effort to force a crossing of the Potomac by Confederate cavalry and infantry was broken by “grape and canister, causing the river actually to run with blood.”
Of course, by the time Philadelphians read their Monday paper Harpers Ferry had already surrendered.
In Tuesday’s paper the editors wrote of the “signal victory” achieved two days before. As the Confederates withdrew westward, into and over the mountains, they suffered “a shameful and overwhelming defeat.” The threat was ended. The editors believed that the enemy could not avoid “utter annihilation, or, at best, the virtual surrender of his position.”
The Sunday battle was the Battle of South Mountain. After a day of hard fighting, the Confederates were forced to withdraw from the gaps and move westward. The Federals had achieved a victory, but it was far from the decisive triumph announced by the Press on Tuesday. The editors relied on McClellan’s dispatches to Halleck, printed in the same edition. In a Sunday night dispatch McClellan proclaimed “a glorious victory.” On Monday morning he assured the general-in-chief that Lee’s force was “making for the river in a perfect panic” and that Lee had admitted that his troops had been “shockingly whipped.” In a second dispatch that morning McClellan wrote “It is stated that General Lee gives his losses at 15,000.”
Three brief dispatches in Tuesday’s edition hinted that the garrison at Harpers Ferry was in serious danger.
As the opposing armies battled along Antietam Creek, Philadelphia readers could get the bad news that Harpers Ferry had fallen on the 15th. Wednesday’s edition also contained more details about South Mountain, with varying estimates of casualties on both sides.
One report on South Mountain included news of a chance discovery in an abandoned Confederate camp near Frederick. In small print, just above a casualty list, was the news that Lee’s Special Order No. 191 (misnamed as No. 119 in the paper) had been found by Union troops. This was the famous “Lost Order” detailing the movements of Lee’s dangerously divided army. McClellan was now armed with the knowledge of Lee’s bold plan. Philadelphia readers knew also, as the Press quietly summarized Lee’s plan.
Every edition of the Press contained a column in which the editors attempted to digest the flood of news and create some order for the reader, surely confused by the contradictory dispatches appearing in news columns. On Wednesday, the editors’ digest presented South Mountain as a decisive Federal victory that would force the Confederates out of Maryland. “That they are recrossing the Potomac is certain, and, indeed by the time this meets the reader’s eye not a single rebel regiment may be in Maryland.” Lee’s army, the editors said, was a “demoralized mass…in full retreat.”
Further down, however, the editors mentioned a report “that a battle was going on yesterday near Sharpsburg, Maryland. This
