The FReeper Foxhole Revisits The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg)(9/17/1862) Part I - Sep. 17th, 2004

http://www.texasrifles.com ^ | July 30, 1995 | Peter Carlson

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits

'And the Slain Lay in Rows'

There's not much there. It's just a field, really. But people come every day, sometimes from far away, to stand and look.

They park their cars on a road that rises and dips with the rolling hills. They step out and glance around. They bow their heads to read the sign and then straighten up to stare out at the field. There's a split-rail fence and, in the distance, some farm buildings -- a white silo, a fading barn. In between there's hay -- 30 acres of tall green stalks of grass topped with tiny seeds. When the breeze picks up, the stalks begin to quiver, then shake, then sway back and forth like sea grasses caught in gentle waves.

It's beautiful to watch, hypnotic and mesmerizing, but that's not why the people stand there for so long. They're staring at the grass but they're seeing something else, something that hasn't been there for 133 years. They seldom speak. When they do, it's usually in a hush, nothing loud enough to drown out the drone of the crickets.

This field of hay is called "the Cornfield" because that's what it was at dawn on September 17, 1862. By noon, though, the corn was gone, cut to the ground by bullets and cannon shells, and the field was covered with thousands of dead or broken men. It was the bloodiest part of the bloodiest day in this country's history -- the Battle of Antietam. Nearly 23,000 Americans were killed, wounded or missing in action outside Sharpsburg, Md., that day -- nearly four times the American casualties on D-Day. When the sun set and the battle ended, the two opposing armies were still in about the same positions they'd been the previous night. Yet something was won that day, something so profound that George F. Will once called the Battle of Antietam "the second most important day in American history." July 4, 1776, gave us the Declaration of Independence. September 17, 1862, gave us the Emancipation Proclamation.


That terrible day at Antietam, the First Texas Regiment battles for the Cornfield. Of 226 engaged, 40 returned unharmed.

Today, few Americans know much about Antietam, and even fewer visit the battlefield. More than a million and a half tourists cram into Gettysburg every year and nearly a million visit Manassas, but fewer than 240,000 venture to Antietam. Those who do find that Sharpsburg hasn't changed much since the battle. It has a few inns, a gallery of Civil War art and a tiny museum, but not a single motel or souvenir stand or fast-food joint. Except for a small stone visitors center, a cemetery and some monuments, the battlefield, too, looks about the same as it did before the shooting started. Most of the fields where soldiers fought and died are still farms where families coax crops from the ground.

Antietam is only 70 miles from Washington, but it's off the tourist track, away from the interstates, tucked into the beautiful hills of western Maryland. It's not a place you stumble upon by accident. People tend to come to Antietam in search of something -- a fallen ancestor, a glimpse of history, a place to contemplate their country. They find a field, a sunken dirt road, an old stone bridge, a tiny white church -- all of them haunted by an air of tragedy so palpable that it compels almost everyone to whisper, as if they were visiting a cathedral.


Federal Troops retreat from the Cornfield

They stand silently, gazing out at the swaying grass of the Cornfield. Ask them what they're thinking and nearly all of them repeat some variation of the same three questions:

How could they have done it?

Could we do it today?

Could I?

"The Union forces in Virginia have suffered three catastrophic defeats in 1862," says Jerry Holsworth. "They have been humiliated by General Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, mauled by Lee in the Seven Days Battle, and again at Manassas. They huddle around Washington, D.C., in a state of very low morale . . ."



Holsworth is a park ranger at the Antietam National Battlefield. He's standing behind the visitors center on a sweltering afternoon, delivering the standard half-hour orientation speech in his own flamboyant style. Spread out in a semicircle around him are two dozen tourists in shorts and sneakers and T-shirts. Holsworth has asked where they're from, and they've replied Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio. Holsworth is from Texas. At 44, he's working his second summer on the Antietam battlefield.

And now he's standing in his Park Service uniform -- gray shirt, green pants, Smokey Bear hat -- telling the story of the battle, enlivening it with dramatic flourishes and plenty of body English. He tells how Robert E. Lee's Confederates have driven the Union army out of Virginia and back to Washington, how Abraham Lincoln is desperate for a victory so he can issue the Emancipation Proclamation, how Lee has seized the initiative by crossing the Potomac and invading Maryland, hoping that a victory on Northern soil will bring aid from England and France.

"Lee's army is suffering, folks," Holsworth says in his Texas drawl. "Half the men are barefoot. They're in rags. They've been fightin' continuously for three or four months without a break. Many of them are livin' on green corn and creek water."


General Robert E. Lee

Still, the Rebels easily seized the city of Frederick, and Lee decided to take a dangerous gamble. Knowing that Union Gen. George McClellan was a slow, cautious man, Lee figured that he could divide his already-outnumbered army, send part of it to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, and then reunite it -- all before McClellan attacked. Lee issued Special Order 191, which detailed his plan. But one of his officers wrapped a copy of the order around three cigars and accidentally dropped it in a field near Frederick, where a Union soldier found it. It was passed up the ranks to McClellan, who instantly realized that he could destroy Lee's divided army piece by piece. He pondered this for 18 hours, then sent his army after Lee.


General George McClellan

Holsworth sweeps his hand out in a long horizontal arc, pointing out the ridge that his audience is standing on. "Lee will bring what's left of his army here to Sharpsburg Ridge with the idea of giving up the campaign and skedaddling back to Virginia," he says. He pauses dramatically. "But that night Lee would see the letter that would change his mind. Dear General Lee: Harpers Ferry will surrender in the morning. Signed T.J. Jackson, Major General, Confederate States Army.' "

The next day, as promised, Jackson captured Harpers Ferry. He left Gen. A.P. Hill and a few thousand men to handle the surrender, then marched his troops back here, to the high ground between the Potomac River and Antietam Creek. Reinforced, Lee decided to stand and fight. The Rebels, about 40,000 strong, dug in along Sharpsburg Ridge. The Federals, 80,000 of them, prepared to attack. Everyone on both sides realized that tomorrow would bring a cataclysmic battle. The sun set amid the sound of sniper fire. Rain began to fall.



"The day before the battle, the soldiers came around and said, You all better get out, there's gonna be a hell of a battle here,' " says Earl Roulette. "That was on my great-granddaddy Roulette's farm. He stayed during the battle. A lot of people took their families and went out along the river to a big cave."

Roulette had three great-granddaddies with farms on the battlefield -- a Roulette, a Snavely and a Rohrbach. He lives on a fourth farm, on the other side of town, near the spot where Lee made his headquarters. He farmed it for more than half a century before he retired -- "wheat and corn and barley and hay and cattle, pretty much the same as they did then." In 1976, he sold a big chunk of it to a company that built a development where the streets are named after Confederate generals -- Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, Hill.


Confederate dead on the Hagerstown road at the Battle of Antietam

"Everybody thinks the Civil War was forever ago," he says. "I'm only 75 and a half, and my grandfather was 12 during the battle. He hid down at Snavely's Ford. I remember my grandpappy talking about it. What I'm saying is: It's just one generation."

He's an old man with a bald head fringed by a few wisps of white hair, but he's still spry enough to hop up from his dining room table to fetch a few mementos. He comes back with an old document encased in plastic. It's a handwritten list of everything his great-grandfather William Roulette lost during the battle -- 8 hogs, 12 sheep, 3 calves, 3 barrels of flour, 155 bushels of potatoes, 220 bushels of apples . . . It goes on for page after page.


General A.P. Hill

"See, this was September," he says. "These farmers were all ready for winter. In those days, you didn't run over to A&P or Food Lion to get your stuff. If you didn't have it in the fall, you did without till spring."

William Roulette filed his list with the federal government, hoping to be compensated for his losses, but his great-grandson doubts that he ever got a nickel. "He had to prove it was taken by the Northern army," he says, "and how the hell could you prove it when both armies were fighting there?"

He points to another item on the list -- "burial ground for 700 soldiers." He smiles wryly. "Can you imagine 700 soldiers buried in your back yard?"


Confederate dead in the Sunken Lane at the Battle of Antietam

He puts down the list, rummages through a metal tray piled with battle relics he's found on his farm over the years -- bullets, belt buckles, cannonballs. He picks out a dime. It looks almost new, but the date reads 1861. "It lay out there for over a hundred years," he says. "I just found it a couple of years ago."

He digs out a pair of bullets with tooth marks in them. "You've heard the expression biting the bullet'?" he asks. "Well, here's a couple that was bit on." He figures they were bitten by soldiers fighting the pain of getting a wounded arm or leg amputated -- a common operation after the battle. "You don't go around biting bullets unless you got a pretty good reason."

He sorts through the pile and picks out a thin gold ring. He didn't find it on his farm; it was passed down from his grandpa Snavely.

"A soldier died in their house," he says. "I believe it was an officer and not just a plain soldier. Whichever side it was, soldiers from the other side were coming and they had to get rid of him, 'cause if you had an enemy soldier in your house, you were the enemy. Feelings ran a little high along about then. So anyhow, they took him and they dumped him in the creek. And before they threw him in, my grandpa Snavely took this ring off his finger."


General John Bell Hood

He holds the ring gently between his thumb and forefinger. Its circle is broken. There's a piece missing, a section cut or worn away. He raises it up to where it can catch the sunlight that streams through the window, but it's too old and tarnished to glimmer.

"This meant something to somebody," he says.

---

---

FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[Soaring Feather]

I bet so too, a lot of rain is coming in from those storms.

We are expecting temps in the 50s on Sunday.

[Valin]

I was talking to a young lefty I work with the other day and he was all exicited about Ameica have 1,000 casualties in the war on terror. I pointed out to him the number of casualties at Antietam in 12(?) hours. Context is all.

[Valin]

it was a rainy and foggy day today

It some how seems appropriate.

[PhilDragoo]

SHARPSBURG (ANTIETAM) (PAGE 1 OF 13)

Official Records of the Civil War - Battle Reports

General George McClellan - Antietam/Sharpsburg

Report of Major General George B. McClellan
Battles of South Mountain and Antietam

Near Sharpsburg, MD, September 29, 1862

I have the honor to report the following as some of the results of the battles of South Mountain and Antietam: At South Mountain our loss was 443 killed, 1,806 wounded, and 76 missing; total, 2,325. At Antietam our loss was 2,010 killed, 9,416 wounded, and 1,043 missing total, 12,469.

Total loss in the two battles, 14,794.

The loss of rebels in the two battles, as near as can be ascertained from the number of their dead found upon the field, and from other data, will not fall short of the following estimate: Major Davis, assistant inspector general, who superintends the burial of the dead, reports about 3,000 rebels buried upon the field of Antietam by our own troops. Previous to this, however, the rebels had buried many of their own dead upon the distant portion of the battlefield, which they occupied after the battle - probably at least 500. The loss of the rebels at South Mountain cannot be ascertained with accuracy, but as our troops continually drove them from the commencement of the action, and a much greater number of their dead were seen on the field than of our own men, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their loss was greater than ours. Estimating their killed at 500, the total rebel killed in the two battles would be 4,000, according to the ratio of our own killed and wounded. This would make their loss in wounded 18,742, as nearly as can be determined at this time. The number of prisoners taken by our troops in the two battles will, at the lowest estimate, amount to 5,000. The full returns will no doubt show a larger number. Of these about 1,200 are wounded. This gives the rebel loss in killed and wounded and prisoners 25,542. It will be observed that this does not include their stragglers, the number of whom is said by citizens here to be large. It may be safely concluded, therefore, that the rebel army lost at least 30,000 of their best troops during their brief campaign in Maryland.

From the time our troops first encountered the enemy in Maryland until he was driven back into Virginia, we captured 13 guns, 7 caissons, 9 limbers, 2 field forges, 2 caisson bodies, 39 colors, and 1 signal flag. We have not lost a single gun or color. On the battlefield of Antietam 14,000 small arms were collected, besides the large number carried off by citizens and those distributed on the ground to recruits and other unarmed men arriving immediately after the battle. At South Mountain no collection of small arms was made, owing to the haste of the pursuit from that point. Four hundred were taken on the opposite side of the Potomac.

George B. McClellan,
Major-General, Commanding

Source: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

~~~

Official Records of the Civil War - Battle Reports

General Robert E. Lee - Antietam/Sharpsburg

Report of General Robert E. Lee
Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia, Sharpsburg, MD,
September 18, 1862

Mr. President:

On the afternoon of the 16th instant the enemy, who, you were informed on that day, was in our front, opened a light fire of artillery upon our line. Early next morning it was renewed in earnest, and large masses of the Federal troops that had crossed the Antietam above our position assembled on our left and threatened to overwhelm us. They advanced in three compact lines. The divisions of Generals McLaws, R. H. Anderson, A. P. Hill, and Walker had not arrived the previous night, as I had hoped, and were still beyond the Potomac. Generals Jackson's and Ewell's divisions were thrown to the left of Generals D. H. Hill and Longstreet. The enemy advanced between the Antietam and the Sharpsburg and Hagerstown turnpike, and was met by General Hill's and the left of General Longstreet's division, where the contest raged fiercely, extending to our entire left. The enemy was driven back and held in check, but before the divisions of McLaws, Anderson, and Walker - who, upon their arrival on the morning of the 17th, were advanced to support the left wing and center - could be brought into action, that portion of our lines was forced back by superior numbers. The line, after a severe conflict, was restored and the enemy driven back, and our position maintained during the rest of the day.

In the afternoon the enemy advanced on our right, where General Jones' division was posted, who handsomely maintained his position. General Toombs' brigade, guarding the bridge over Antietam Creek, gallantly resisted the approach of the enemy; but his superior numbers enabling him to extend his left, he crossed below the bridge, and assumed a threatening attitude on our right, which fell back in confusion. By this time, between 3 and 4 p.m., General A. P. Hill, with five of his brigades, reached the scene of action, drove the enemy immediately from the position they had taken, and continued the contest until dark, restoring our right and maintaining our ground.

R. E. Lee,
General Commanding

His Excellency President Davis
Richmond, Va.

Source: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies

~~~

~~~

[Soaring Feather]

Thanks Phil, are you safe from the storms?

[Soaring Feather]

Good night and be safe. See you tomorrow.

[snippy_about_it]

"Landscape Turned Red

Thanks for the book recommendation.

[snippy_about_it]

Good evening w over w. McClellan rested too often. He had the advantage I guess but didn't make use of it.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the links and stories Phil. We took pictures but I don't have the software I need on my laptop to download them. It will have to wait til we get back to Oregon.

Those are the ugliest bunny slippers I've ever seen. LOL.

[snippy_about_it]

Good night feather.

[Old Sarge Ski]

Excellent pic of the 14th Indiana. They were one of the regiments in Kimball's Brigade, French's Division, II Army Corps that hit the Sunken Road. They were on the right flank of the brigade line. Kimball had been Colonel of the 14th before he was given the brigade. The 8th Ohio was next on the left, they were from the north-central part of Ohio mostly from around Oberlin and Lorain. Their commanding officer was Frank Sawyer, who had been a professor at Oberlin College. Next was the 132nd Pennsylvania, a 9-month regiment from the coal fields around Williamsport and Wilkes Barre. Colonel Oakford was the only officer in the regiment with any experience--he had been in the 15th Pennsylvania (3-months service) Infantry in 1861--and he was the first man killed as the attack started. Antietam was the 132nd's first time in action. On the left flank was the 7th Virginia (it wasn't West Virginia until 1863) from around Beckley. The brigade held the crest of the ridge from about 10 AM until 2 PM when the Irish Brigade came up on their left and moved through them to drive the Confederates out of the Sunken Lane. Kimball's brigade was then moved to a position supporting the Union batteries on the ridgeline overlooking Sharpsburg (where the old Visitor Center used to stand) to draw the fire of the Confederate guns so that the Union artillery could identify targets. They lay in this position for the rest of the day.

[Iris7]

Interesting. Jackson and his peaches, the bridge, the piecemeal Federal attacks.

So far a nice job. Important subject, capture of the District in '62 was not impossible.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[SAMWolf]

It some how seems appropriate

Yeah, I was thinking of angels crying.

[SAMWolf]

Morning w_over_w.

Playing catch up from last night.

I reconize the CBS logo but what the heck is it attached to?

[SAMWolf]

Morning Phil Dragoo.

I knew you'd come up with some Kerry slippers. :-)

Looks like McClellan could have worked for our present day media. What spin! He held most of the advantages at Antietam and still blew it. Based on his report, you'd think he just won the war.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the additonal info on some of the units involved.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Iris7. McClellan had the chance to finish off Lee's Army that day, IIRC he had about 30,000 Union troops that were never committed.

[snippy_about_it]

...the piecemeal Federal attacks.

As we toured the battlefield yesterday Sam and I were discussing the piecemeal attacks and how they had the manpower to make a more concentrated effort. The Union had the chance and the manpower to win it.

[Old Sarge Ski]

Parallels Parallels You want some steenking parallels.

1) "The Democrats can run a War candidate on a Peace platform, or a Peace candidate on a War platform...Neither one can win." President Abraham Lincoln.

2) They, the Democrats, ended up running McClellan on the Vallandigham Peace Platform (which, in a nutshell said, the war is lost, we have to negotiate a peace settlement with the Confederacy).

3) McClellan gave a speech at West Point, the day after he was nominated, but before the convention could officially notify him that he was the peace candidate, which said the exact opposite of the platform. And then...

4) the following day Sherman took Atlanta ("Atlanta is our, and fairly won").

5) Meanwhile, Vallandigham, was plotting the Northwest Conspiracy with Tom Hines to have Copperheads in the western states revolt against the Lincoln government. Trouble was Hines couldn't find 20 Copperheads in Chicago with enough cajones to actually show up for the rebellion and went back to Canada in disgust.

6) Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, erstwhile Cornfed prexy was something of a hero from the previous war (Colonel of the 1st Mississippi Rifles) under General Zachary Taylor. He was never afraid to keep reminding his generals about it. He kept Braxton Bragg in command until the Army of Tennessee was routed at Missionary Ridge. He replaced Joe Johnston (the only General Sherman ever worried about) with John Bell Hood in the middle of the Atlanta Campaign (three of Hood's USMA clasmates from the class of '53 were general officers under Sherman) and wouldln't move the Cornfederacy's best general (DIck Taylor) east of the Mississippi River because he distrusted him politically (his daddy had been President of the US, and had been Davis's commander in Mexico.

That's all for now.