My
interest in history was first sparked in 1961, when I was in seventh grade, and
discovered the Civil War writings of Bruce Catton. Here are some of his best stories
and anecdotes.
The first comes from Glory
Road, second volume in a trilogy covering the Army of the Potomac. Writing
in the 1950s (when women rarely appeared in history books), Catton had this:
Annie
Etheridge goes to war.
On the second day of fighting at Chancellorsville (May
1863) a young woman, “gentle, respected Annie Etheridge, who wore a black
riding habit with a sergeant’s chevrons and who had been part of the army since
the early days of the war,” appeared on the firing line. She had gone off with
the Third Michigan as a laundress but when the regiment headed for
battle and all the other women stayed behind, she remained with the troops. She
was described by soldiers as “a young and remarkably attractive girl,” “modest,
quiet, and industrious.” General Phil Kearny saw her caring for the wounded one
day and made sure she had a horse and a sergeant’s pay afterwards.
In the following scene we find her riding along the firing
line, carrying a sack of hardtack and a dozen canteens of hot coffee for the fighting
men. A shell explodes nearby, as she offers her refreshments to a group of officers.
Three horses are killed. A soldier from Pennsylvania remembers, “She never
flinched or betrayed the slightest emotion of fear.”
She was seen later, inspiring the gunners of a battery locked
in a long-range duel with enemy guns. They had been hit hard and were thinking of
abandoning position. “That’s right, boys,” Etheridge shouted encouragement,
“now you’ve got good range, keep it up and you’ll soon silence those guns.”
The gunners gave a cheer, sent her to the rear, and kept firing.
We were more inspired by “that brave little sergeant in petticoats” one man recalled
than if all the officers of the army had urged them on.
After the battle Gen. David B. Birney’s division was paraded.
Birney had devised a decoration called the Kearny Medal. (By this time, Kearny
had been killed.) It was a bronze Maltese cross awarded to enlisted men for
valor. Birney pinned the medal on the blouse of Miss Etheridge. (63-198; 215)
*
June 15: Catton pointed out that the “wolf whistle” was unknown to the
men of the Army of the Potomac. On the march north to Gettysburg, the soldiers met
friendly greeting at every town and at most homes they passed along the road.
Often, the young ladies came out to watch them march past. Catton explains:
“The army had its own method of greeting these girls…an abrupt, significant
clearing of the throat, or cough, which burst out spontaneously whenever a line
of march went by a nice-looking young woman, so that at such a time, as one
veteran said, ‘the men seemed terribly and suddenly afflicted with some
bronchial affection.’”
NOTE TO TEACHERS: It might be fun to have
some of the boys in class demonstrate. For humor, you might pick one of the other boys in class to play the role of the “nice-looking young woman.”
The
following notes come from Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1953), the first volume in the trilogy.
As commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George B. McClellan
always faced one insurmountable obstacle: George B. McClellan. As early as August
1861 he complains, “I am here in a terrible place; the enemy have from three to four times my force; the
President, the old general [Winfield Scott], cannot or will not see the true
state of affairs.” (62-66)
Not once will he be outnumbered in this war—and at Antietam
he will have a 2-1 advantage over Lee.
A soldier in the 75th New York described the
condition of his regiment in the fall of 1861: “Tonight not 200 men are in
camp. Capt. Catlin, Capt. Hulbert, Lt. Cooper and one or two other officers are
under arrest. A hundred men are drunk, a hundred more are at houses of ill fame,
and the balance are everywhere…Col. Alford is very drunk all the time now.” (62-62)
The band of the 15th Massachusetts didn’t
appreciate being assigned to ambulance duty, which meant they would have to
serve as stretcher bearers during any fighting. When they refused their colonel
clapped them in the stockade and fed them bread and water till they relented.
(62-71)
McClellan did an excellent job organizing his forces and promised
the war would be “short, sharp and decisive.” Pressed by Lincoln to move against
the enemy, he was soon complaining to his wife, “I can’t tell you how disgusted
I am becoming with these wretched politicians.” “I am becoming daily more
disgusted with this administration—perfectly sick of it. If I could with honor
resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow…” “There are some of the
greatest geese in the cabinet I have ever seen…” “It is sickening in the
extreme, and makes me feel heavy at heart, when I see the weakness and
unfitness of the poor beings who control the destinies of this great country.”
Typically, he said that if defeat did come, “the fault will
not be mine…” In my opinion: McClellan was really good at making excuses,
almost always a fatal flaw in any kind of endeavor. (62/88-90)
*
“We can buy our gloves together.”
When the book opens, McClellan has just had his army taken
away and General John Pope is in charge. Many officers have doubts about the
new commander. “I don’t care for John Pope one pinch of owl dung,” says Gen. Samuel
D. Sturgis. (62-7)
Gen. Kearny, who lost his left arm early in the war, tried
to console Gen. Oliver O. Howard after he lost his right. Howard replied,
“There is one thing we can do, General: we can buy our gloves together.”
Kearny invented a red diamond patch for the men of his
division to wear on their caps. Later the Army of the Potomac adopted patches
for all corps, forerunner of patches troops wear today. (62-31)
 |
| Shoulder patch: First Air Cavalry, Vietnam War. |
Pope is badly defeated at Second Bull Run (Aug. 29-30, 1862).
The fight opens with Yankee forces attacking Stonewall Jackson and his men. The
Rebels are protected by “an unfinished railroad embankment…a position as good
as a fort,” Catton explains.
Jackson is outnumbered and pulls back part of his line,
which Pope interprets as a sign of an impending retreat. He telegraphs Washington
to say he has won a great victory! Other officers warn that Rebel reinforcements
are fast approaching. Catton explains: “When Pope made up his mind it stayed
made up, and there was no room in it this morning for anything but the
conviction that the enemy was in flight.” He renews his attacks in an attempt to
shatter Jackson’s line. Jackson’s men run out of ammunition at one point and throw
heavy stones down the embankment at the Yanks. A Union officer, sword drawn, rides
up the embankment alone, trying to encourage his men to follow. Even Rebel defenders
shout, “Don’t kill him!” Too late: a volley erupts and when the smoke clears
the brave man and his mount are dead.
Catton adds: “Jackson’s men behind their railway embankment
were in shape to hold their ground for the rest of the summer.” (62-191)
Pope puts many of his men into marching formation, ready to
pursue Jackson when he retreats—just in time for Confederate forces to crash
down on their rear. The blue army is routed. (My students rarely knew what a “rout” was even though they had heard the word
in stories about sports.)
There was one moment of humor at Second Bull Run. A wounded
Union officer was being carried to the rear on a stretcher. A Rebel shell
sailed overhead and exploded a few yards away. The wounded man leaped to the
ground and ran for the rear on undamaged legs. (62-44)
Catton says that by the end of this debacle the men in the
ranks had come to “the sickening realization that men get killed uselessly
because their generals are stupid, so that desperate encounters where the last
drop of courage has been given serve the country not at all and make a patriot
look like a fool.” (62/45-48)
“Seeing
the elephant.”
Soldiers who saw combat referred to it as “seeing the
elephant.” The phrase comes from a time when going to the circus was cause for
amazement and seeing an elephant the most amazing of all. (This comes from readings
other than Catton.)
A New Jersey man admitted that going under fire the first
time was a terrible experience. Some of the men in his company fell to the
ground as if shot and picked themselves up later, quite sheepishly, he said.
One boy went up to the firing line, as if in a trance, moaning over and over,
“O Lord, dear good Lord!” (62-127)
*
Gen. John Gibbon, of the famous “Black Hat Brigade,” later
nicknamed the “Iron Brigade,” led one of the three-pronged attacks designed to
trap Sitting Bull and the Sioux at the Little Big Horn in 1876.
On rainy days, when soldiers of the 6th
Wisconsin, in Gibbon’s brigade, were hunkered down in their tents, some private
with a strong voice would call out, “When our army marched down to [Second] Bull
Run, what did the big bullfrog say?”
Hundreds of men would croak, “Big thing!” Big thing!”
(Catton says that phrase was slang for any notable event or achievement.)
The first soldier would call again, “And when our army came
back from Bull Run, what did the little frogs say?”
The chorus would respond, “Run, Yank! Run, Yank!”
The first soldier again: “What does the Bully Sixth say?”
The answer showed the men’s spirits were unbroken: “Hit ‘em
again! Hit ‘em again!” (62-18)
The men of the Sixth also took “perverse” pride in
their regimental band, which one officer described as “that execrable band.”
The drum major, William Whaley, however, was adept with a baton.
Gibbon’s brigade clashed unexpectedly with Confederate forces
one day, during the Peninsular Campaign. The two battle lines “volleyed away at
the murderous range of less than one hundred yards.” After 90 minutes, with
dusk coming on, the fight ended with both sides where they were when it began.
The Second Wisconsin, which had never been in combat before, took 500
men into the fight and had 298 dead, wounded or missing. The Sixth lost
“only” 74; but the regimental historian later explained that until the end of
the war the Iron Brigade was always ready
for action, but after this “we were never again eager” for a fight.
The historian of the Second Wisconsin would note
that by war’s end nine of ten men in combat assignments had been shot at least
once.
*
For all his faults, McClellan was popular with his men. After
Pope was beaten at Second Bull Run, he took command again. One soldier described
the euphoria at the news he was back in charge. His unit is marching by
starlight when they hear:
Shout upon shout went into the
stillness of the night; and as it was taken up along the road and repeated by
regiment, brigade, division and corps, we could hear the roar dying away in the
distance. The effect of this man’s presence upon the Army of the Potomac—in
sunshine or rain, in darkness or daylight, in victory or defeat—was electrical,
and too wonderful to make it worth while attempting to give a reason for it.
(62-51)
Having started with the story of Pope, Catton turns to McClellan’s
first time in charge, when he takes the Army of the Potomac south in the spring
of 1862. He had spent eight months preparing to advance. Now with McClellan
finally approaching, Gen. Joseph Johnston, in command of Rebel forces, withdraws
from his position at Manassas Junction, burning everything his men can’t carry.
Yankee troops discover that his lines were defended by “Quaker
guns,” trimmed logs painted black.
The fact McClellan had not come close enough to have a look or test Confederate
strength until then did not enhance his reputation. For months, the watchword
of his picket’s had been, “All quiet on the Potomac.” This had become an
insult, symbolizing inaction.
“No
one but McClellan would have hesitated to attack.”
McClellan moves his troops by water, lands on the Yorktown
peninsula and allows his army to be bottled up. Gen. John B. Magruder, commanding
Confederate forces at Yorktown, fooled the Yankees by marching troops through a
clearing in the woods where they can be seen, back the other way along a hidden
road, and across the clearing, again and again. McClellan’s scouts warned that enemy forces were present in great strength.
Writing to Lee, Johnston noted, “no one but McClellan would
have hesitated to attack.” (62-109)
Catton describes one famous soldier:
[George Armstrong] Custer was
familiarly known as “Cinnamon” because of the cinnamon-flavored hair oil he
used so liberally; wore long glistening curls and a show-off uniform with a
tight hussar jacket and black trousers trimmed with gold lace, and looked, as
another staff member remarked, “like a circus rider gone mad.” (62-115)
In Glory Road,
the second book in the trilogy, he has this to say: Custer was “a flamboyant
hell-for-leather horseman…who possessed the great basic virtue of liking to
fight.” (63-243)
Believing in what he came to call “Custer’s Luck,” the
young cavalry general who liked to fight
proved reckless in the extreme—and lucky—on several occasions during the Civil
War. He was just as reckless fighting Native Americans at Washita in 1868 and at
the Little Big Horn in 1876.
Just not as lucky.
McClellan was adept at making
men feel like real soldiers. The 4th Michigan had a sharp little
fight one day, losing eight killed or wounded. Catton describes the scene as their
commander stops to offer encouragement. “‘How do you feel, boys?’ There was a
quick chorus of ‘We feel bully, General!’ Still casual, McClellan asked them: ‘Do
you think anything can stop you from going to Richmond?’ And the regiment
yelled, ‘No!’” (62-116)
Lincoln tried to prod him to move more forcefully and break
the Confederate defenses. McClellan wrote to his wife, “I was very much tempted
to reply that he had better come and do it himself.”
We used to have good discussions in class about what qualities made for good leadership.
You could apply much of it to leadership on the basketball court or soccer
field, which interested students, or even within families. I would argue that
teachers must have leadership skills, as well.
Administrators, too!
McClellan’s biggest problem was his use of Allan Pinkerton’s
spies to supply intelligence. Pinkerton had contacts with African Americans in
Richmond and they helped move Union spies in and out. Pinkerton would eventually
warn that Lee had 180,000 men to wage the Seven Days’ Battles. “Almost
everything he did and failed to do in this campaign,” Catton says of McClellan,
“can be explained by that one fact.” (63/118-123)
At most, in the spring of 1862 the Confederates had 80,000
men to stop the Army of the Potomac.
*
Soldiers learn on the job, like any workers, except that their
learning involves bloodshed. Catton writes:
Officers who had been bright
with gold-embroidered shoulder straps, red sashes, and plumed hats [at the
start of the war] became more somber-looking; many of them bought privates’
uniforms and sewed their insignia of rank on the shoulders, having learned that
in a fight or on the picket-lines the enemy believed in picking off officers
first. Regiments that had worn fancy leggings or gaiters began to discard them,
the men finding that it was more comfortable to roll the trouser leg snug at
the ankle and haul the gray regulation sock up over it. Paper collars had
disappeared, and the men in the Zouave regiments, which wore gay red pants and
yellow sashes, topped by Turkish-style fezzes, began to wonder if these
uniforms were not both unduly conspicuous on the firing line and excessively
hard to keep neat. (62/124)
Death in combat made at least some sense. More died from
disease during the Civil War than bullets or cannon fire. Many Northern
soldiers were felled by malaria when they came to the South. No one knew how
typhoid spread and thousands died. The worst affliction may have been camp
diarrhea, which hit almost everyone and might become chronic. A Michigan
soldier remembered “the terrible, nauseating stench that envelopes a military
camp.” In one month, without a single shot fired, seven men died and eight were
medically discharged in the 125th Ohio.
Army sanitation was often lax in the extreme. One day the
surgeon of the 57th New York complained to his commanding officer that
a few careless men were infested with lice. “The whole army is lousy!” his colonel
exploded. “I am lousy, you are lousy, General McClellan is lousy!” Students might
be interested in the provenance of the
word, “lousy.” (62-144)
The soldiers learned to travel light. The 40th
New York used ten wagons to carry baggage in the early days; by fall of 1862
the men hauled what they needed on their backs. Most experienced soldiers got
rid of the knapsack. A man spread out half a pup tent (soldiers paired up when
they camped), placed blanket on top, arranged spare clothing, small items of
gear on top; rolled tightly, tied with straps from discarded the knapsack, tied
two ends close and looped the roll over a shoulder. A Massachusetts soldier
joked that one man would carry a towel, the other a cake of soap.
The bayonet was very rarely used in battle. The men did
find the round end, with the point jabbed in the ground, made a good candle
holder for reading or writing letters.
How to
make “shadow soup.”
Unlike Southern troops, the Army of the Potomac normally had
ample supplies. Still, one soldier grumbled about the “shadow soup” served to
sick and wounded in the hospital. Catton provides the recipe: “Put a large
kettle of water on to boil, then hang a chicken so that its shadow falls in the
water, and boil the shadow for half an hour; add salt and pepper and serve.”
(62-175)
(I am reminded of Norman Mailer’s assessment of army
cooking during World War II: “When it’s
smokin’ it’s cookin’; when it’s burnin’ it’s done.”)
A veteran described a typical noonday
halt while on the march. Each man built a small fire, had a small tin can with
a twine handle, filled it with water, and poured in coffee from a little bag.
At the
same time a bit of bacon or pork was broiling on a stick, and in a few minutes
the warm meal was cooked and dispatched. Then, washing his knife by stabbing it
in the ground, and eating up his plate, which was a hardtack biscuit, the
contented soldier lit his laurel-root pipe, took a few puffs, lay down on his
knapsack for a pillow, and dozed until the sharp command, “Fall in!” put an end
to his nap. (62-178)
Catton gives a detailed description
of hardtack: three inches on a side, nearly half an inch thick. It was good
enough when fresh, nine or ten making a day’s ration. Hardtack could be soaked
in water, drained, fried in pork fat, a repast called “skillygalee.” If moldy
it was thrown away. If it had weevils it was issued to the troops anyway.
Heating it by the fire would drive the weevils out. Salt pork was sometimes
eaten raw on hardtack when troops were on the move.
The men of the Army of the Potomac had
plenty of coffee. It was issued as whole beans, which they pounded on rocks
with stones or rifle butts.
Not much thought was given by
commanders to organized meals. If beef was issued when troops were in the
field, the common soldier usually wrapped a piece on a stick and broiled it
over a fire.
In settled camps, during winter,
most companies did elevate one or two men to the status of company cook. “A
company cook is a peculiar being,” one veteran recalled. “He generally knows
less about cooking than any man in the company. Not being able to learn the
drill, and too dirty to appear on inspection, he is sent to the cook house to
get him out of the ranks.” (62-180)
Escaped slaves who had been plantation
cooks sometimes joined up with the troops and were warmly welcomed.
*
May 31-June 1: As far as the Peninsular Campaign goes, Johnston finally
decided to gamble and attack McClellan before the Union commander could close
in around Richmond and commence siege operations. During the battle of Seven
Pines (or: Fair Oaks) Johnston took a bullet in the shoulder and a shell
fragment knocked him from his horse. It was probably the worst shot fired by
any Yankee during the war.
Robert E. Lee took command.
Lee ordered Stonewall Jackson down from the Shenandoah Valley
and launched a series of savage attacks. McClellan was frozen by his belief
that Lee had an “overwhelming” numerical advantage—and that his repeated
attacks proved he must have more men. “Pinkerton’s fantastic reports,” Catton
says, “believed like the writ of true faith, were worth a couple of army corps
to the Confederacy that week.” McClellan lost his nerve and his troops were ordered
to load up on all the salt pork, hardtack and coffee they could carry and set
fire to their supply dumps.
The men sensed “a big skedaddle” was coming.
McClellan did care deeply about his men. Writing his wife, he
admitted, “Every poor fellow that is killed or wounded haunts me.”
June 27: On the night of the Battle of Gaines’s Mills, he called in
his top commanders. All corps commanders agreed that retreat would be wise.
Kearny and Gen. Joseph Hooker, both division commanders, insisted Rebel forces in
their front were weak and they could smash a path to Richmond if given permission
to turn and attack. Permission was refused. Kearny denounced McClellan to his
staff later, “in language so strong that all who heard it expected he would be
placed under arrest until a general court martial could be held, or at least he
would be relieved of his command.”
 |
| McClellan at home. |
A rattled, angry Gen. McClellan (as usual: blaming others) wrote
to Secretary of War Stanton after the Gaines Mill fight:
I feel too earnestly tonight.
I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the
government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now the game is
lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I own no thanks to you
or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice
this army.
A War Department clerk deleted the last two sentences
before passing the message on. (62-142)
“If
any army can save this country it will be the Army of the Potomac.”
One evening, a cavalry officer rides up to McClellan’s
headquarters. He reports there are empty roads in his front—and if the army
would halt its retreat Union troops could storm into Richmond unopposed. McClellan
replies, “If any army can save this country it will be the Army of the Potomac,
and it must be saved for that purpose.”
(He will display exactly the same kind of hesitancy at the
Battle of Antietam in September 1862.)
Lee’s attack at Malvern Hill, the final act of the
Peninsular Campaign, turns out to be a slaughter—and proof that even the
greatest generals in history make terrible blunders. It resulted in the slaughter
of thousands of gray soldiers, and what Catton calls a “field day for the [Union]
gunners.”
Rain fell that night. Mist blanketed the battlefield the next
morning. Colonel William Averell described the scene:
[We could see nothing in the
gray light and mist] but out of it came a pulsating, endless wave of pitiful
sound—the agonized crying and moaning of thousands of wounded boys who had been
lying on the ground, unattended, all night long. By and by the sun came up and
the mist thinned, and presently he could see the battleground, one of the most
horrible sights of the war. Five thousand men lay there, covering the ground
like ragged carpet that lived and made incoherent sounds and, here and there
moved dreadfully.
“A third of them were dead or dying,” he wrote,
“but enough of them were alive and moving to give the field a singular crawling
effect.” (62-140)
*
After Pope got pummeled at Second Bull Run, President
Lincoln gave McClellan a second chance. Lee was headed north to Maryland and
the Army of the Potomac followed. Soldiers in the Third Wisconsin remembered
being fed “cakes, pies, fruits, milk, dainty biscuits and loaves” passed out by
citizens in Frederick. A soldier in the Ninth New York found the
streets “filled with women dressed in their best, walking bareheaded, singing,
and testifying in every way the general joy.”
“It seemed like Paradise,” said a third veteran, “this
Maryland, and many were the blessed damosels we saw therein.”
If there has ever been an army disinterested in the
opposite sex, historians have not recorded the fact.
A few random notes: The Irish Brigade included the 63rd,
69th and 88th New York, Irish to a man, emerald green
regimental flags, with gold embroidery, an Irish harp, shamrock and sunburst.
Also added: 29th Massachusetts, mostly Irish. (62-167)
The “Napoleon” fired a 4.5 inch round shot, could hit a mile
away, not accurate past ½ mile, best for firing case shot or canister, which
contained 200-300 round bullets. Catton called the field piece “a sawed-off
shotgun of enormous size.” The maximum range for canister was 250 yards but
infantry could pick off gunners at that range too. (62-190)
A Minié ball (“minnies” to the men) could kill at half a
mile. Effective range was 200-250 yards.
 |
| Similar to canister; don't have a picture of that. |
After Pope’s defeat, Catton notes:
The Prime Minister of Great
Britain, having compared notes with the Foreign Secretary, was getting ready to
propose to the British Cabinet that England take the lead in inducing a concert
of powers to step in and bring the Civil War to an end—which, of course, could
only mean independence for the Confederacy….The two men were waiting now to see
how the invasion of Maryland turned out before taking final action.
McClellan helped restore optimism and the armies marched
north, toward their clash at Antietam. “Homesick boys with muskets on their
shoulders would finally have to say which way American history henceforth would
go,” says Catton. (62-209)
*
Most history teachers know about Special Orders No. 191.
Catton provides good detail.
Corporal Barton W. Mitchell and First Sgt. John McKnight
Bloss were lying in grass in a fence corner beside the road. They noticed an envelope.
Mitchell rolled over and opened it, finding three cigars inside, wrapped in Special
Orders No. 191. Catton says that nowhere in history does anyone say “what
happened to the cigars.”
The orders prove: “Lee’s army was at this moment completely
scattered, and McClellan, his own army united, was closer to the scattered
pieces than those pieces were to each other.” If he struck hard Lee’s army
would have no chance. “There was just one catch in it. McClellan would have to
move fast.”
McClellan was well aware that this was his great
opportunity: “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will
be willing to go home….Tomorrow we pitch into his center,” he told his corps
commanders, “and if you people will only do two good days’ marching I will put
Lee in a position he will find it hard to get out of.” (62/215-217)
Unfortunately, McClellan did not move decisively enough. A
relatively small Rebel force on South Mountain blocked his path the better part
of a day. Storming up South Mountain that day, Lt. Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of
the 23rd Ohio, was wounded. Sgt. William McKinley was not hurt.
McClellan
lets a chance to crush Lee slip.
McClellan was in view of Sharpsburg on September 16, when
Lee’s army was scrambling to reunite. He was excited, having pushed the enemy off
South Mountain, writing his wife, “If I can believe one-tenth of what is
reported, God has seldom granted an army a greater victory than this.”
He wrote to Lincoln in the same vein, telling him, “General
Lee admits they are badly whipped.” (62-251)
All day on the 16th McClellan studied the
situation in his front. “He was going to have everything ready before he opened
the fight, and nothing was going to be lost through overhasty action. Or gained
either,” Catton explains. At that moment, Lee had about 25,000 men present.
The famous Dunker Church—a landmark in the battle to
come—was home to a sect which believed steeples were a vanity and killing a
sin.
There was a brisk little fight around what would later
become famous as the “East Wood.” But both armies went to sleep that night,
with a tension in the air, and men reported the mysterious sound of muffled
tramping of men unseen. General Joseph K. Mansfield spread a blanket in a fence
corner and lay down to sleep. A lot of the boys in the 10th Maine
were awake and talking around nearby fires. Mansfield rose, “went over to shush
them,” but he was nice about it, and not like a major general. At midnight the
camps died down and the soldiers slept.
“And whatever it may be that nerves men to die for a flag
or a phrase or a man or an inexpressible dream was drowsing with them,” Catton
writes, “ready to wake with the dawn.” (62-261)
It might work to ask
students: What is it that makes people
willing to die for an idea or a country, etc.?
The
devil’s playthings littered the camps.
It rained in the night. At dawn in the mist and half-light pickets
saw movement and opened fire, the armies lying close. By six a.m. the air shook
with the thunder of heavy artillery fire. Many camps were littered with decks
of cards (card playing being considered sinful and no sense carrying the
devil’s playthings into a fight). Hooker’s artillery began blasting what would
forever after be known as “The Cornfield.”
Thick clouds of smoke made it impossible for men to know
what was going on other than in a small area round them:
The black powder used in those
days left heavy masses of smoke which stayed on the ground or hung at waist
level in long tattered sheets until the wind blew it away, and this smoke
deposited a black, greasy film on sweaty skins, so that men who had been
fighting hard looked grotesque, as if they had been ineptly made up for a
minstrel show.
The intense fire shredded cornstalks, splintered rifles, punctured
canteens and tore haversacks and human beings to shreds. (62/269-271)
Those who fought at Antietam remembered bullets as thick as
hail in a storm. The men advanced, bending their heads, as if facing a driving
rain. A Union officer was heard shouting, “This fire is murderous!”
Gen. John B. Hood’s gray troops had just sat down to cook their
first real meal in days when they were ordered forward. A blue attack had
broken the main Rebel line and the Yankees would almost surely win the battle unless
stopped. Hood’s men formed in time, met the Federal attack, and delivered a
volley which was “like a scythe running through our line,” said one stunned Yankee
survivor. Union forces broke and ran, Hood’s men following and jeering.
General Gibbon noticed that several Union gun crews had let
the elevation screws on their field pieces run down. So they were firing over
the heads of Hood’s men. He leaped from his horse, adjusted one screw himself,
and the battery was soon firing double-canister at a range of fifty feet. Catton
says that the charging Confederate line melted away under this fire.
As always, there were those who could not stand the strain.
Catton describes the fields and woods behind the lines being filled with:
The skulkers and the unabashed
cowards who always ran in every battle…the men who could stand something but
not everything, the men who had stood fast in all previous fights but found
this one too terrible to be borne; the men who helped wounded comrades to the
rear and then either honestly got lost…or found that they could not quite make
themselves go back into it. (62/272-275)
Gen. Mansfield rode down his battle line, shouting, “That’s
right, boys, cheer—we’re going to whip them today!” In the smoke and confusion
he rode forward for a look at enemy positions. “Those are Rebels, General!” a
soldier shouted warning. Confederate troops opened fire. Mansfield’s horse was
hit. The general took a bullet in the stomach, a mortal wound. Gen. Hooker took
a bullet through his boot—which filled with blood—and had to ride to the rear. The
men of the 27th Indiana shot up all their ammunition, 100 rounds per
man, and had to retrieve cartridges from the dead and wounded. Corporal
Mitchell, who had found the cigars and Lee’s orders, was badly wounded.
Fresh Union attacks went forward. The 19th
Massachusetts had been a “fancy-Dan” outfit, electing not only its officers,
but its men, at the start of the war. Their division advanced across “The Cornfield,”
stepping over dead and wounded. Shells that passed over their first line hit
the second or third. A survivor later grumbled, “We were as easy to hit as the
town of Sharpsburg.” Union and Confederate
infantry exchanged fire at a
distance of fifteen paces. Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (later Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court) was wounded for the second time during the war. He
would be wounded six times before the war ended. (62/277-289)
(Catton is not my source for that number; and since I can’t
remember the source, I’m not sure I’m correct.)
The
bees win a battle.
There was heavy fighting around the Roulette farm. Rebel
artillery blasted a row of beehives. The 132nd Pennsylvania was a
new regiment and had been facing bullets well enough, but the bees drove them
back.
The focal point of Union attacks, now led by Gen. Edwin V. Sumner’s
corps, shifted to the “Sunken Road.” Catton explains:
The men who defended it were
almost wholly protected; the men who tried to take it would have to advance in
the open, exposed to a crippling fire. It was as nasty a strong point as the
army ever ran up against: the famous sunken road, know forever after (for
sufficient reason) as Bloody Lane.
The Yankee attackers stopped at the top of a low rise, the road
slightly below. The men in gray could hear shouted commands.
Down they came, four ranks deep.
Rebel artillery concentrated on the blue infantry, knowing
if the Sunken Road was taken there was nothing to stop the Union army from
capturing Sharpsburg and cutting off Lee’s retreat. Yankee artillery
concentrated on the enemy guns. Rebel crews ever after remembered this day as
“artillery hell.” The Irish Brigade drove the Confederates back from a position
to the right of the lane. Half of the men in the 63rd New York were
killed or wounded. Gen. Thomas Meagher’s horse took a bullet in full gallop and
both horse and rider went down. Meagher was knocked cold. Two blue regiments finally
got into position where they could enfilade the road. The battle, says Catton,
“had come to a moment of supreme crisis.” Gen. D.H. Hill grabbed a musket and
led the last of his gray reserves in a counterattack.
 |
| Meagher and the Irish Brigade. |
A Federal battery withdraws to a safer spot. A civilian
gentleman in a two-horse carriage appears out of nowhere, alights, and begins handing
out ham and biscuits. Then he takes several wounded men to an aid station.
At this point, Lee’s line was a “frayed thread.” “Many
years later Longstreet confessed that at that moment ten thousand fresh Federals could have come through and taken Lee’s
army and all it possessed.” (62/292-298)
McClellan
blows his chance to win and settles for a tie.
On this terrible day, McClellan had 87,000 men present for
battle.
Lee had 41,000.
Sumner, stunned by the carnage he had already witnessed, refused
division commanders permission to press their attacks. A staff officer arrived from
McClellan’s HQ to urge Sumner to advance if he could. “Go back, young man,” he
told the messenger, “and tell General McClellan I have no command! Tell him my
command, Banks’ command and Hooker’s command are all cut up and demoralized.
Tell him General Franklin has the only organized command on this part of the
field!” (62-299)
McClellan had it in his power at that moment to shatter
Lee’s army, and very possibly win the war. Failing to see it, he upheld Sumner’s
decision not to continue the attack.
*
Meanwhile, a planned Union advance on their left never got
going. Antietam Creek could have been crossed in most places without men getting
their belt buckles wet. Yet it “was treated that day as if it were quite impassible,
a veritable Rhine River, not to be crossed except dry-shod on a bridge.”
McClellan sent several messages urging his left wing to attack. Yankee troops
scheduled to lead the way across the bridge used up their ammunition banging
away at Rebel defenders on a line of hills across the stream. Another unit had
to go first. Two hours were wasted shuffling regiments into position. All morning,
Lee kept stripping troops from this part of the line to plug holes elsewhere.
When the Federals got across and got up on the plateau behind the bridge, around
3 p.m., only 2,500 Rebels barred the path to Sharpsburg—which meant Union
troops were once again in perfect position to cut Lee’s escape route. Gen.
Ambrose Burnside, leading Union forces on this wing, had one division
restocking ammunition, one division in reserve, and a third looking for a ford
which wasn’t even needed. (62-301)
The
last desperate hour of the Confederate Army visibly at hand.
Catton describes the situation: “Slowly the Rebel line of
defense faded away—brigades up front all cracked, Sharpsburg filled with
demoralized stragglers looking for shelter, the last desperate hour of the
Confederate Army visibly at hand.”
Gen. A.P. Hill arrived just in time to knock Burnside’s advance
back on its heels, having marched so hard to reach the scene that half his men
fell out on the way. Burnside reported that he could hold his ground, but needed reinforcements.
A Union brigade lay down halfway up a hill, under heavy
fire. A veteran recalled “the most vehement, terrible swearing I have ever
heard.” “The mental strain was so great,” said another, “I think, in the life
of Goethe on a similar occasion—the whole landscape for an instant turned
slightly red.” (62-309)
By this time each side had lost 10,000 men. I always found it interesting to ask students what that meant.
NOTE TO TEACHERS: My classes tended to see it as a tie. It was necessary to prod
them before someone realized: Lee was in worse shape than ever. Now he had
31,000 men left to face 77,000 troops under McClellan. When I asked questions
like this I sometimes ignored students if they seemed to know the answer. I
wanted to get more kids involved in any discussion and a variety of answers
never hurt.
Several officers urged McClellan to send Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s
corps, held in reserve, to renew the attack. Porter was hesitant. “Remember,
General—I command the last reserve of the last army of the Republic,” he told
McClellan.
The fighting ended for the day. (62/314-315)
*
Darkness brought an end to the carnage. Reinforcements
joined McClellan all day on the 18th, while he and his corps commanders
planned fresh attacks. That night, however, his men could hear Lee’s troops pulling
out of the lines and heading for the Potomac River to escape.
Catton notes that burial
duties were handed over to regiments that had fallen out of the good graces
of brigade or division commanders. The body of one soldier, draped over the
fence at Bloody Lane, was found to have been struck by 57 bullets. Capt. George
Freeman Noyes saw an officer carrying a large piece of salt pork, just issued
to feed his men. He cried out that he was the only survivor of his unit and had
no idea what to do with the food.
McClellan himself was thrilled by his success, writing his
wife, “You should see my soldiers now!
You never saw anything like their enthusiasm. It surpassed anything you ever
imagined.” “Those in whose judgment I rely tell me that I fought the battle
splendidly and that it was a masterpiece of art.” (62/320-321)
He and they were wrong.
NOTE TO TEACHERS: My classes used to have a great discussion on the topic: That human beings are most often defeated by their attitudes, like McClellan, imagining obstacles in their paths to be insurmountable. I had been in the Marines myself and had some amusing stories about “attitude adjustments” administered at my expense at Parris Island. I had also seen a guy named Tim Traylor running the Cincinnati Heart Mini-Marathon with steel arm braces/crutches (he had cerebral palsy). We used an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer, about Bruce Jennings, who bicycled across the USA with one leg. The question I liked to pose was, “How could Jennings do it? How could he make it when most people with two legs assumed they couldn’t?
Later I pedaled across the
country myself.
Lincoln decided the time was finally right after the
Battle of Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The next month the
Emperor of France proposed that his country, Russia, and England step in and
bring about an armistice. The British cabinet rejected the idea. Now that
Lincoln had acted, no one wanted to be known as an “apologist for slavery.”
(62-322)
In November 1862, Lincoln fired McClellan again.
Around the campfires one night, soldiers of the 17th
Michigan discussed recent events. They agreed that the president should retire
all the generals “and select men from the ranks who will serve without pay,
lead the army against Lee, strike him hard, and follow him until he fails to
come to time.” (62-331)
 |
| The bitter fruit of all battles. |
If you are interested I have a number of Civil War readings for students for sale at Middle School History and Tips for Teachers, on TpT.
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