Rebel lines hold after six assaults
The fighting at Antietam is most ferocious in the morning when Union soldiers begin to assault the Confederates in Miller's Cornfield.
For 3 1/2 hours, the battle lines will shift back and forth through the North Woods, the East Woods, the West Woods and the Cornfield. All are north of where the Visitors Center is today.
When Union Major Gen. Joseph Hooker first begins to march forward, the Confederates bombard his troops with artillery placed half a mile away on Nicodemus Heights. The Union soldiers are frightened by the cannonballs that come whizzing by them at 700 and 800 mph.
"The attack will be savage as Hooker's men move forward against the Confederates posted behind those rail fences west of the Hagerstown Pike, in the north edge of the West Woods," said Edwin C. Bearss, the former chief historian for the National Park Service.
Fighting in the 30-acre cornfield is intense. The battle lines are less than 250 yards apart and soldiers shoot at each other as fast as they can load their rifles.
One Texas regiment would lose 186 of its 226 soldiers, including two companies that were wiped out to the last man.
"One of the Texas officers in charge of the Fourth Texas was a berserker," Bearss said. "He would strip himself to the waist and he would carry an ax, a double-headed ax, into battle in lieu of a sword."
Union batteries, searching for Confederates concealing themselves in the cornfield, begin raking the field with cannon fire, spewing out canisters of iron and lead balls like huge shotguns.
The battle smoke at times becomes so thick, that nothing of the opposing lines can be seen but their flags. Incredibly, soldiers have to hold their fire because they can't see their targets.
Hooker's attack drove deep into Jackson's Confederate lines, but Jackson's desperate counterattack at 7 a.m. drives the federals back beyond the Cornfield and into the East Woods.
"There's terrible fighting and then savage fighting in which General Hooker will say that the corn stalks are cut off as close to the ground as if cut with a scythe," Bearss said.
By 7:30 a.m., the troops are spent and shattered. Some 5,600 soldiers on both sides are dead or wounded -- almost the same number of American troops killed during the D-Day invasion of World War II.
But this is only the beginning.
For the next 90 minutes, the federals continue to attack -- a total of six different assaults this morning. But the thrusts aren't coordinated. The battered Confederate lines are stretched, but they hold.
One of the Union thrusts is a corps of 7,200 fresh Union troops led by Major Gen. Joseph Mansfield.
As Mansfield's troops move forward toward the East Woods, two Confederate brigades move up on a ridge in front of him and prepare to fire
"Suddenly, Mansfield's men come under fire," Bearss said. "Mansfiled raises a question: 'Are they friend or foe?'
"Mansfiled rides a little out in front to investigate. And as he approaches a fence, there is a shot. And this man, who is commanding troops in battle for the first time in more than 30 years in the army, is mortally wounded."
Mansfield, who was eating breakfast when a trigger-happy Hooker began his first advance, becomes one of six generals to be mortally wounded during the day-long battle
Ambush in the West Woods
By 9 a.m., the action has shifted to the West Woods. It's disaster for the Union forces.
They try a sixth assault, this time with two divisions of nearly 10,000 men. The idea is to turn the Confederate's left flank, throw the rebels into chaos and drive them in to the streets of Sharpsburg.
But it doesn't happen.
One of the divisons led by Union Major. Gen. William H. French gets lost during the mile-long westward march and then suddenly veers to the south where it later smashes into Confederates hidden in the Sunken Road.
The other division of nearly 5,400 Union troops under Major Gen. John Sedgwick march toward the West Woods.
Union Major Gen. Edwin Sumner orders the ill-fated advance into the WestWoods without sending skirmishers out to scout the area, Bearss said.
He'll wish he had.
Unknown to Sumner and Sedgwick, the woods are full of rebels anxiously waiting to spring a deadly ambush, Bearrs said.
When the Union soldiers come within range, the Confederates level their British Enfield rifles and unleash a murderous fire from two directions. The results are horrifying; the guns are deadly accurate up to 300 yards.
Within 20 minutes, about 2,200 Union soldiers are killed or wounded by an enemy they couldn't even see. One Union colonel will later write that he lost 60 men before his soldiers could get off a single shot.
Union troops trailing the initial assault hold their fire in fear they'd shoot into the backs of their own men, Bearss said. Both Sumner and Sedgwick are shot, but survive.
Union troops lucky enough to escape the slaughter flee the West Woods as the Rebels, led by regiments from South Carolina, give chase.
"The South Carolinians will surge across the Hagerstown Pike, letting go the rebel yell as they pursue the shattered Union force," Bearss said.
But the rebels stop when they run into Union artillery that begins to blast away at them.
By 10 a.m., the fighting in the northern part of the battlefield is over.
