Marching from Fort Monroe, Major General George B. McClellan's army encountered Major General John B. Magruder's small Confederate army at Yorktown behind the Warwick River. Magruder's theatrics convinced the Federals that his works were strongly held. McClellan suspended the march up the Peninsula toward Richmond, ordered the construction of siege fortifications, and brought his heavy siege guns to the front. In the meantime, General Joseph E. Johnston brought reinforcements for Magruder. On 16 April, Union forces probed a weakness in the Confederate line at Lee's Mill or Dam No. 1, resulting in about 309 casualties. Failure to exploit the initial success of this attack, however, held up McClellan for two additional weeks, while he tried to convince his navy to maneuver the Confederates' big guns at Yorktown and Gloucester Point and ascend the York River to West Point thus outflanking the Warwick Line. McClellan planned for a massive bombardment to begin at dawn on May 4, but the Confederate army slipped away in the night toward Williamsburg.

Result (s): Inconclusive

In the first pitched battle of the Peninsula Campaign, nearly 41,000 Federals and 32,000 Confederates were engaged. Following up the Confederate retreat from Yorktown, Hooker's division encountered the Confederate rearguard near Williamsburg. Hooker assaulted Fort Magruder, an earthen fortification alongside the Williamsburg Road, but was repulsed. Confederate counterattacks, directed by Major General James Longstreet, threatened to overwhelm the Union left flank, until Kearny's division arrived to stabilize the Federal position. Hancock's brigade then moved to threaten the Confederate left flank, occupying two abandoned redoubts. The Confederates counterattacked unsuccessfully. Hancock's localized success was not exploited. The Confederate army continued its withdrawal during the night.

After the Union defeat at Manassas in July 1861, General George B. McClellan took command of the Federal forces in and around Washington and organized them into a formidable fighting machine, the Army of the Potomac. In March 1862, leaving a strong force to cover the capitol, McClellan shifted his Army by water to Fort Monroe on the tip of the York - James River peninsula, only 100 miles southeast of Richmond. Early in April, he advanced toward the Confederate capital. Anticipating such a move, the Southerners abandoned the Manassas area and marched to meet the Federals. By the end of May, McClellan's troops were within sight of Richmond. Here General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army assailed the Federals in the bloody but inconclusive Battle of Seven Pines.

On May 31, General Joseph E. Johnston attempted to overwhelm two Federal corps that appeared isolated south of the Chickahominy River. The Confederate assaults, though not well coordinated, succeeded in driving back the IV Corps and inflicting heavy casualties. Reinforcements arrived, and both sides fed more and more troops into the action. Supported by the III Corps and Sedgwick's division of Sumner's II Corps (that crossed the rain-swollen river on Grapevine Bridge), the Federal position was finally stabilized. General Joseph E. Johnston was seriously wounded during the action, and command of the Confederate army devolved temporarily to Major General G.W. Smith. On June 1, the Confederates renewed their assaults against the Federals who had brought up more reinforcements but made little headway. Both sides claimed victory. The Confederate name for the battle is Seven Pines and the Union name is Fair Oaks.

The most remarkable thing about the ensuing action was that a plan as sound as Johnston's appeared at the outset-so simple and forthright, indeed, as to be practically fool-proof, even for green troops under green commanders-could produce such an utter brouhaha, such a Donnybrook of a battle, Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks as some called it, was unquestionably the worst-conducted large scale conflict in a war that afforded many rivals for that distinction. What it came to, finally, was a military nightmare: not so much because of the suffering and bloodshed, though there was plenty of both before it was over, but rather because of the confusion, compounded by delay.

Longstreet began it. Since his assigned route, out the Nine Mile road, would put him under Smith, who outranked him, he persuaded Johnston to give him command of the forces on the right. As next-ranking man he was entitled to it, he said, and Johnston genially agreed, on condition that control would revert to him when the troops converged on Seven Pines. Longstreet, thus encouraged, decided to transfer his division to the Williamsburg road, which would give him unhampered freedom from Smith and add to the weight of D.H. Hill's assault on the Union center. He did not inform Johnston of this decision, however, and that was where the trouble first began. Marching south on the outskirts of Richmond, across the mouth of the Nine Mile Road, he held up Smith's lead elements while his six brigades of infantry trudged past with all their guns and wagons. This in itself amounted to a considerable delay, but Longstreet was by no means through. When Huger prepared to enter Williamsburg road, which led to his assigned route down the Charles City road, he found Longstreet's 14,000 man division to his front, passing single file over an improvised bridge across a swollen creek. Nor would the officers in charge of the column yield the right of way; first come first served, they said. When Huger protested, Longstreet informed him that he ranked him. They stood there in the morning sunlight, the South Carolina aristocrat and the broad, hairy Georgian, and that was the making of one career and the wrecking of another. Huger accepted the claim as true, though it was not, and bided his time while Longstreet took the road.

The morning sun climbed up the sky, and now it was Johnston's turn to listen, as Davis had done two days ago, for the boom of guns that remained silent. As he waited with Smith, whose five brigades were in position two miles short of Fair Oaks Station, his anxiety was increased by the fact that he had lost one of his divisions as completely as if it had marched unobserved into quicksand. Nobody at headquarters knew where Longstreet was, nor any of his men, and when a staff officer galloped down the Nine-Mile road to find him, he stumbled into the enemy lines and was captured. When at last Longstreet and his troops were found-they were halted beside the Williamsburg road, two miles out of Richmond, which Huger's division filed past to enter the Charles Cityroad-Johnston could only presume that Longstreet had misinterpreted last night's verbal orders. The delay could be ruinous. Everything depended on the action being completed before nightfall; if it went past that, McClellan would bring up reinforcements under cover of darkness and counterattack with superior numbers in the morning. As the sun went past the overhead, Johnston remarked that he wished his army was back in its suburban camps and the thing had never begun. He could no more stop it, however, than he could get it started. All he could do was wait; and the waiting continued. Lee rode out from Richmond determined not to spend another day like the office-bound day of Manassas. Johnston greeted him courteously, but spared him the details of the mix-up. Presently there came from the southeast an intermittent far-sounding rumble of cannon. It grew until just after 3 o'clock, with ten of the fifteen hours of daylight gone, the rumble was vaguely intensified by a sound that Lee believed was musketry. No, no, Johnston told him; it was only an artillery duel. Lee did not insist, although it seemed to him that the subdued accompaniment was rising in volume. Then at 4 o'clock a note came from Longstreet, informing the army commander that he was heavily engaged in front of Seven Pines and wanted support on his left.

That was the signal Johnston had been awaiting. Ordering Smith's lead division to continue down the Nine Mile road until it struck the Federal right, he spurred ahead to study the situation at first hand. As he rode off, the President rode up; so that some observers later said that the general had left in haste to avoid an irksome meeting. Davis asked Lee what the musketry meant. Had he heard it, too? Lee asked. Unmistakably, Davis said. What was it?

Mostly it was D.H. Hill. He had been in position for six hours, awaiting the signal from Huger as instructed, when at 2 o'clock he ran out of patience and surged forward on his own. (It was just as well; otherwise the wait would have been interminable. Cutting cross-country to take his assigned position on Hill's right, Huger had become involved in the upper reaches of White Oak Swamp. He would remain so all through what was left of this unhappy Saturday, as removed from the battle-except that the guns were roaring within earshot-as if he had been with Jackson out in the Shanandoah Valley.) Hill's attack was no less furious for being unsupported on the flanks. A forty year old North Carolinian, a West Point professional turned schoolmaster as a result of ill health, he was a caustic hater of all things northern and an avid critic of whatever displeased him anywhere at all. Dyspeptic as Stonewall Jackson, his brother-in-law, he suffered also from a spinal ailment, which gave him an unmilitary bearing whether mounted or afoot. His friends called him Harvey; that was his middle name. A hungry-looking man with haunted eyes and a close-cropped scraggly beard, he took a fierce delight in combat-especially when it was hand to hand, as now. His assault swept over the advance Federal redoubt, taking eight guns and a brigade camp with all its equipment and supplies. Scarcely pausing to reform his line, he went after the rest of Keyes' corps, which was drawn up to receive him just west of Seven Pines. Here too the fight was furious, the Federals having the advantage of an abatis previously constructed along the edge of a line of woods, while the Confederates, emerging from a flooded swamp, had to charge unsupported across an open space to reach them. Longstreet's complaint, made presently when he appealed to Johnston for help on the left, that green troops were "as sensitive about the flanks as a virgin," did not apply to Hill's men today. Especially it did not apply to the lead brigade, four regiments from Alabama and one from Mississippi under Brigadier General Robert E. Rodes. Inexperienced as they were, their only concern was the tactics manual definition of the mission of the infantry in attack: "to close with the enemy and destroy him." Advancing through the swamp, thigh-deep in mud and stagnant water, they propped their wounded against the trunks of trees to keep them from drowning, and came on, yelling as they came. They reached the abatis, pierced it, and drove the bluecoats back again. It was gallantly done, but at a dreadful cost: Rodes' 2000-man command, for instance, lost 1094 killed, wounded, or drowned. And there were no replacements near at hand. Out of thirteen brigades available to Longstreet here on the right-his six, Hill's four, and Huger's three-less than half went into action. Three of his six he had sent to follow Huger into the ooze of White Oak Swamp, and a fourth he had posted on the left to guard against a surprise attack, in spite of the fact that there was nothing in that direction except the other half of the Confererate Army. However, the Federals were forming a new line farther back, perhaps with a counterattack in mind, and he was not so sure. Huger was lost on the right; so might Smith be lost on the left. At any rate, that was when he sent the note to Johnston, appealing for the protection of his virginal left flank. Smith's division, reinforced by four brigades from Magruder and A.P. Hill, followed the army commander down the Nine Mile road towards Fair Oaks, where the leading elements were formed under his direction for a charge that was intended to strike the exposed right flank of Keyes, whose center was at Seven Pines, less than a mile away. Late as the hour was, Johnston's juggernaut attack plan seemed at last to be rolling toward a repetition of his triumph at Manassas. But not for long. Aimed at Keyes, it struck instead a substantial body of men in muddy blue, who stood and delivered massed volleys that broke up the attack before it could gather speed.

They were strangers on this ground; the mud stains on their uniforms were from the Chickahominy bottoms. It was Sumner's corps, arrived from across the river. Commander of the 1^st US Cavalry while Albert Sidney Johnston commanded the 2d-Joe Johnston was his lieutenant-colonel, McClellan one of his captains-Sumner was an old army man with an old army notion that orders were received to be obeyed, not questioned, no matter what obstacles stood in the way of execution. "Bull" Sumner, he was called-in full, "the Bull of the Woods"-because of the loudness of his voice; he had a peacetime custom of removing his false teeth to give commands that carried from end to end of the regiment, above the thunder of hoofs. Alerted soon after midday (Johnston's aide, who had ridden into the Union lines in search of Longstreet, had told his captors nothing; but his presence was suspicious, and the build-up in the woods and swamps out front had been growing more obvious every hour) Sumner assembled his corps on the north bank, near the two bridges he had built for this emergency. Foaming water had buckled them; torn from their pilings, awash knee-deep in the center, they seemed about to go with the flood. When the order to support Keyes arrived and the tall white-haired old man started his soldiers across, an engineer officer protested that the condition of the bridges made a crossing not only unsafe, but impossible. "Impossible?" Sumner roared. "Sir, I tell you I can cross! I am ordered!" Marching toward the sound of the firing, he got his men over the swaying bridges and across the muddy bottoms, on to the Fair Oaks and the meeting engagement which produced on both sides, in about equal parts, feeling of elation and frustration. If Sumner had kept going he would have struck the flank of Longstreet; if Smith had kept going he would have struck the flank of Keyes. As it was, they struck each other, and the result was a stalemate. Smith could make no headway against Sumner, who was content to hold his ground. Hill, to the south, had shot his bolt, and Keyes was thankful that the issue was not pressed beyond the third line he had drawn while waiting for Heintzelman, who had sent one division forward to help him but did not bring the other up till dusk.

By then the battle was practically over. Seven Pines, the Southerns called it, since that was where they scored their gains; to the Northerners it was Fair Oaks, for much the same reason. The attackers had the advantages in spoils--10 guns, 6000 rifles, 347 prisoners, and a good deal of miscellaneous equipment from the captured camp-but the price was excessive. 6134 Confederates were dead or wounded: well over a thousand more than the 5031 Federals who had fallen.

Johnston was wounded and President Jefferson Davis placed General Robert E. Lee in command. Seizing the offensive, Lee sent his force (now called the Army of Northern Virginia) across the Chickahominy River and, in a series of savage battles, pushed McClellan back from the edge of Richmond to a position on the James River.

Confederate Brigadier Robert Hopkins Hatton born November 2 1826, Steubenville Ohio, died May 31 1862, Fair Oaks Station Virginia. Pre-war profession was Teacher, lawyer, politician, US congressman. Enlisted May 1861 as Colonel of 7th Tennessee which fought at Cheat Mountain and Savage's Station. Promoted May 1862 Brigadier General commanded Hatton's Brigade in G W Smith's Division and killed at Seven Pines. Buried at Cedar Grove, Lebanon, Tennessee.

Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Gustavus A. Bull of the 35th Georgia was killed.

Result(s): Inconclusive

June 25, 1862 - Oak Grove or French's Field, King's School House

Oak Grove was the first of the Seven Days' battles. On June 25, Major General George B. McClellan advanced his lines along the Williamsburg Road with the objective of bringing Richmond within range of his siege guns. Union forces attacked over swampy ground with inconclusive results, and darkness halted the fighting. McClellan's attack was not strong enough to derail the Confederate offensive that already had been set in motion. The next day, Lee seized the initiative by attacking at Beaver Dam Creek north of the Chickahominy.

Result (s): Inconclusive (Union forces withdrew to their lines.)

June 26, 1862 - Beaver Dam Creek or Mechanicsville or Ellerson's Mill

Second of the Seven Days' Battles. Gen. Robert E. Lee initiated his offensive against McClellan's right flank north of the Chickahominy River. A. P. Hill threw his division, reinforced by one of D. H. Hill's brigades, into a series of futile assaults against Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter's V Corps, which was drawn up behind Beaver Dam Creek. Confederate attacks were driven back with heavy casualties. Jackson's Shenandoah Valley divisions, however, were approaching from the northwest, forcing Porter to withdraw the next morning to a position behind Boatswain Creek just beyond Gaines' Mill.

Result(s): Union victory

June 27, 1862 - Gaines' Mill - or First Cold Harbor

This was the third of the Seven Days' Battles. On June 27, 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee renewed his attacks against Porter's V Corps, which had established a strong defensive line behind Boatswain's Swamp north of the Chickahominy River. Porter's reinforced V Corps held fast for the afternoon against disjointed Confederate attacks, inflicting heavy casualties. At dusk, the Confederates finally mounted a coordinated assault that broke Porter's line and drove his soldiers back toward the river. The Federals retreated across the river during the night. Defeat at Gaines' Mill convinced McClellan to abandon his advance on Richmond and begin the retreat to James River. Gaines' Mill saved Richmond for the Confederacy in 1862.

Result(s): Confederate victory

June 30, 1862 - Glendale or Nelson's Farm, Frayser's Farm, Charles City Crossroads, White Oak Swamp, New Market Road, Riddell's Shop

This is the fifth of the Seven Days' Battles. On June 30, Huger's, Longstreet's, and A. P. Hill's divisions converged on the retreating Union army in the vicinity of Glendale or Frayser's Farm. Longstreet's and Hill's attacks penetrated the Union defense near Willis Church, routing McCall's division. McCall was captured. Union counterattacks by Hooker's and Kearny's divisions sealed the break and saved their line of retreat along the Willis Church Road. Huger's advance was stopped on the Charles City Road. "Stonewall" Jackson's divisions were delayed by Franklin at White Oak Swamp. Confederate Maj. Gen. T.H. Holmes made a feeble attempt to turn the Union left flank at Turkey Bridge but was driven back by Federal gunboats in James River. Union generals Meade and Sumner and Confederate generals Anderson, Pender, and Featherston were wounded. This was Lee's best chance to cut off the Union army from the James River. That night, McClellan established a strong position on Malvern Hill.

Result(s): Inconclusive (Union withdrawal continued.)

July 1, 1862 - Malvern Hill - or Poindexter's Farm

This was the sixth and last of the Seven Days' Battles. On July 1, 1862, Gen. Robert E. Lee launched a series of disjointed assaults on the nearly impregnable Union position on Malvern Hill. The Confederates suffered more than 5,300 casualties without gaining an inch of ground. Despite his victory, McClellan withdrew to entrench at Harrison's Landing on James River, where his army was protected by gunboats. This ended the Peninsula Campaign. When McClellan's army ceased to threaten Richmond, Lee sent Jackson to operate against Major General John Pope's army along the Rapidan River, thus initiating the Northern Virginia Campaign.

Result(s): Union victory

August 28, 1862 - The Battle of 2nd Manassas -

In August 1862, Union and Confederate armies converged for a second time on the plains of Manassas. The naive enthusiasm that preceded the earlier encounter was gone. War was not the holiday outing or grand adventure envisioned by the young recruits of 1861. The contending forces, now made up of seasoned veterans, knew well the reality of war. The Battle of Second Manassas, covering three days, produced far greater carnage, 3,399 killed, and brought the Confederacy to the height of its power. Still the battle did not weaken Northern resolve. The war's final outcome was yet unknown, and it would be left to other battles to decide whether the sacrifice at Manassas was part of the price of Southern independence, or the cost of one country again united under the national standard.

After the Union defeat at Manassas in July 1861, General George B. McClellan took command of the Federal forces in and around Washington and organized them into a formidable fighting machine, the Army of the Potomac. In March 1862, leaving a strong force to cover the capitol, McClellan shifted his Army by water to Fort Monroe on the tip of the York - James River peninsula, only 100 miles southeast of Richmond. Early in April, he advanced toward the Confederate capital. Anticipating such a move, the Southerners abandoned the Manassas area and marched to meet the Federals. By the end of May, McClellan's troops were within sight of Richmond. Here General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate Army assailed the Federals in the bloody but inconclusive Battle of Seven Pines. Johnston was wounded and President Jefferson Davis placed General Robert E. Lee in command. Seizing the offensive, Lee sent his force (now called the Army of Northern Virginia) across the Chickahominy River and, in a series of savage battles, pushed McClellan back from the edge of Richmond to a position on the James River.

At the same time, the scattered Federal forces in northern Virginia were organized into the Army of Virginia under the command of General John Pope, who arrived with a reputation freshly won in the war's western theater. Gambling that McClellen would cause no further trouble around Richmond, Lee sent Stonewall Jackson's corps northward to "suppress" Pope. Jackson clashed indecisively with part of Pope's troops at Cedar Mountain on August 9. Meanwhile, learning that the Army of the Potomac was withdrawing by water to join Pope, Lee marched with General James Longstreet's corps to bolster Jackson. On the Rapidan River, Pope successfully blocked Lee's attempts to gain a tactical advantage, and then withdrew his men north of the Rappahannock River. Lee knew that if he were to defeat Pope he would have to strike before McClellan's Army arrived in northern Virginia. On August 25 Lee boldly started Jackson's corps on a march of over 50 miles, around the Union's right flank to strike at Pope's rear.

Two days later, Jackson's veterans seized Pope's supply depot at Manassas Junction. After a day of wild feasting, Jackson burned the Federal supplies and moved to a position in the woods at Groveton near the old Manassas battlefield.

Pope, stung by the attack on his supply base, abandoned the line of the Rappahannock and headed toward Manassas to "bag" Jackson. At the same time, Lee was moving northward with Longstreet's corps to reunite his Army. On the afternoon of August 28, to prevent the Federal commander's efforts to concentrate at Centreville and bring Pope to battle, Jackson ordered his troops to attack a Union column as it marched on the Warrenton Turnpike. This savage fight at Brawner's Farm lasted until dusk.

Convinced that Jackson was isolated, Pope ordered his columns to converge on Groveton. He was sure that he could destroy Jackson before Lee and Longstreet could intervene. On the 29th Pope's Army found Jackson's men posted along an unfinished railroad grade, north of the turnpike. All afternoon, in a series of uncoordinated attacks, Pope hurled his men against the Confederate position. In several places, the Northerners momentarily breached Jackson's line, but each time were forced back. During the afternoon, Longstreet's troops arrived on the battlefield and, unknown to Pope, deployed on Jackson's right, overlapping the exposed Union left. Lee urged Longstreet to attack, but "Old Pete" demurred. The time was just not right, he said.

The morning of August 30 passed quietly. Just before noon, erroneously concluding the Confederates were retreating, Pope ordered his Army forward "in pursuit." The pursuit, however, was short-lived. Pope found that Lee had gone nowhere. Amazingly, Pope ordered yet another attack against Jackson's line. Major General Fitz-John Porter's corps, along with part of McDowell's, struck Brigadier General W. E. Starke's division at the unfinished railroad's "Deep Cut." The Southerners held firm, and Porter's column was hurled back in a bloody repulse.

Seeing the Union lines in disarray, Longstreet pushed his massive columns forward and staggered the Union left. Pope's Army was faced with annihilation. Only a heroic stand by the northern troops, first on Chinn Ridge and then once again on Henry Hill, bought time for Pope's hard-pressed Union forces. Finally, under cover of darkness the defeated Union Army withdrew across Bull Run toward the defenses of Washington. Lee's bold and brilliant Second Battle of Manassas campaign opened the way for the South's first invasion of the North, and a bid for foreign intervention.

September 14, 1862 - South Mountain Other Names: Crampton's, Turner's, and Fox's Gaps

After invading Maryland in September 1862, General Robert E. Lee divided his army to march on and invest Harpers Ferry. The Army of the Potomac under Major General George B. McClellan pursued the Confederates to Frederick, Maryland, then advanced on South Mountain. On September 14, pitched battles were fought for possession of the South Mountain passes: Crampton's, Turner's, and Fox's Gaps. By dusk the Confederate defenders were driven back, suffering severe casualties, and McClellan was in position to destroy Lee's army before it could re-concentrate. McClellan's limited activity on September 15 after his victory at South Mountain, however, condemned the garrison at Harpers Ferry to capture and gave Lee time to unite his scattered divisions at Sharpsburg. Union general Jesse Reno and Confederate general Samuel Garland, Jr., were killed at South Mountain.

Result (s): Union victory

WHEN JACKSON'S TROOPS reached Sharpsburg on September 16th, Harpers Ferry having surrendered the day before, Lee consolidated his position along the low ridge that runs north and south of the town--stretching from the Potomac River on his left to the Antietam Creek on his right. "We will make our stand on these hills," Lee told his officers.

General Robert E. Lee had placed cannon on Nicodemus Heights to his left, the high ground in front of Dunker Church, the ridge just east of Sharpsburg (site of the National Cemetery), and on the heights overlooking the Lower Bridge. Infantry filled in the lines between these points, including a sunken lane less than a half mile long with worm fencing along both sides (later known as Bloody Lane). A handful of Georgia sharpshooters guarded the Lower Bridge (Burnside Bridge).

By the evening of the 16th, Gen. George McClellan had about 60,000 troops ready to attack--double the number available to Lee. The battle opened at a damp, murky dawn on the 17th when Union artillery on the bluffs beyond Antietam Creek began a murderous fire on Jackson's lines near the Dunker Church.

Miller's Cornfield

As the Federals marched toward Miller's Cornfield north of town, the Confederates rose up in the cornfield and fired on the advancing lines. McClellan responded by withdrawing his infantry and training cannon on the corn. "In the time I am writing," Hooker reported, "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."

Hooker's troops advanced again, driving the Confederates before them, and Jackson reported that his men were "exposed for near an hour to a terrific storm of shell, canister, and musketry." About 7 a.m. Jackson was reenforced and succeeded in driving the Federals back.

An hour later Union troops under Gen. Joseph Mansfield counterattacked and regained some of the lost ground. Less than 200 yards apart, the opposing lines fired lead into each other for a half hour. "They stood and shot each other, until the lines melted away like wax," reported a New York soldier, Isaac Hall. Fighting continued back and forth over the 20-acre cornfield, with the field changing hands 15 times, according to some accounts

Then, in an effort to turn the Confederate left flank, Gen. John Sedgwick's division of Gen. Edwin V. Sumner's corps advanced into the West Woods. There Confederate troops arriving from other parts of the field struck Sedgwick's flank, killing or wounding nearly half of his division--about 2,255 men--within a quarter hour of point-blank fire.

During the three hours of battle, the Confederates had stopped two Federal corps and a division from another, totaling about 20,000 men. Approximately 10,000 men from both sides lay dead or wounded.

MEANWHILE, Gen. William H. French's division of Sumner's Union corps moved up to support Sedgwick but veered south into the center of the Confederate line, under Gen. D. H. Hill. The Confederates were posted along a ridge in an old sunken road separating the Roulette and Piper farms. The 800-yard-long road had been worn down over the years by heavy wagons taking grain to the nearby mill, making an ideal defensive trench for the Rebels.

At dawn some five brigades of D. H. Hill's troops guarded this lane. Soon three brigades had been pulled out to support Jackson in the East Woods, but they were beaten back by Union Gen. George Greene's attack on that position. By 9:30 a.m. the Confederates were stacking fence rails on the north side of the road to provide additional protection from the Union forces, advancing in parade like precision across the field

Firing from behind these improvised breastworks and sheltered in the Sunken Road, the Rebels seemed unassailable. They repelled four different Union charges against the position. "For three hours and thirty minutes," one Union officer wrote, "the battle raged incessantly, without either party giving way."

From 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., bitter fighting raged along this deeply cut lane (afterward known as Bloody Lane) as French, supported by Gen. Israel B. Richardson's division, also of Sumner's corps, sought to drive the Southerners back. By 1 p.m. about 5,600 killed and wounded troops from both sides lay along and in front of this 800-yard lane.

Finally, seeing a weak spot in the Confederate line, the 61st and 64th New York regiments penetrated the crest of the hill at the eastern end and began firing volley after volley full length down the sunken line. Then, misinterpreting an order, a Confederate officer pulled his regiment out of the road. The remaining defenders rapidly scrambled out of the lane, over the fence, and fled through the cornfields to the south, some not stopping until they had reached the outskirts of Sharpsburg itself. More than 300 Rebels threw down their arms and surrendered on the spot.

"Lee's army was ruined," one of Lee's officers wrote later. "And the end of the Confederacy was in sight." About 200 Rebel infantry attempted a weak counterattack, while Lee rushed 20 cannon to the Piper farm. An attack through this hole would have crushed the Confederate center, and the remaining divisions could be destroyed piecemeal. Fortunately for the South, however, McClellan decided against a counterattack with his fresh reserves. That fateful decision would allow the Confederacy to fight on for three more years.

SOUTHEAST of town, Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's corps of 12,000 men had been trying to cross a 12-foot-wide bridge over Antietam Creek since 9:30 a.m. About 450 Georgian sharpshooters took up positions behind trees and boulders on a steep wooded bluff some 100 feet high and overlooking the Lower Bridge. Greatly outnumbered, the Confederates drove back several Union advances toward the bridge.

Finally, at 1 p.m. the Federals crossed the 125-foot-long bridge (now known as Burnside Bridge) and, after a 2-hour delay to rest and replenish ammunition, continued their advance toward Sharpsburg.

By late afternoon about 8,000 Union troops had driven the Confederates back almost to Sharpsburg, threatening to cut off the line of retreat for Lee's army. By 3:30 p.m. many Rebels jammed the streets of Sharpsburg in retreat. The battle seemed lost to the Southern army.

Then at 3:40 p.m. General A. P. Hill's division, left behind by Jackson at Harpers Ferry to salvage the captured Federal property, arrived on the field after a march of 17 miles in eight hours. Immediately Hill's 3,000 troops entered the fight, attacking the Federals' unprotected left flank. Burnside's troops were driven back to the heights near the bridge they had taken earlier. The attack across the Burnside Bridge and Hill's counterattack in the fields south of Antietam resulted in 3,470 casualties--with twice as many Union casualties (2,350) as Confederate (1,120).

Longstreet later wrote, "We were so badly crushed that at the close of the day ten thousand fresh troops could have come in and taken Lee's army and everything in it." But again McClellan held the 20,000 men of V Corps and VI Corps in reserve--and lost a second opportunity to defeat the entire Confederate army. By 5:30 p.m., the Battle of Antietam was over.

The next day Federal and Confederate leaders struck up an informal truce, so they could begin gathering up the wounded and dying. During the evening of the 18th Lee began withdrawing his army across the Potomac River.

Antietam on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Federal losses were 12,410, Confederate losses 10,700. One in four men engaged in battle that day had fallen. Some historians believe that Lee's failure to carry the war effectively into the North caused Great Britain to postpone recognition of the Confederate government. The battle also gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which, on January 1, 1863, declared free all slaves in states still in rebellion against the United States. Now the war had a dual purpose: to preserve the Union and to end slavery.

Result(s): Inconclusive (Union strategic victory.)

September 19, 1862 - Sheperdstown or Boteler's Ford

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