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of greatest difficulty, for the approaches to the bridge were in the nature of a defile, exposed to a raking fire from the Confederate batteries, and an enfilading one from their sharp-shooters.
In several attempts to cross the bridge Burnside was repulsed.
Finally, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, the Fifty-first New York and Fifty-first Pennsylvania charged across and drove its defenders to the heights.
Gathering strength at the bridge by the crossing of the divisions of Sturgis, Wilcox, and Rodman, and Scammon's brigade, with the batteries of Durell, Clark, Cook, and Simmons, Burnside charged up the hill, and drove the Confederates almost to Sharpsburg, the Ninth New York capturing one of their batteries.
Just then A. P. Hill's division, which had been hastening up from Harper's Ferry, came upon the ground, and under a heavy fire of artillery charged upon Burnside's extreme left, and after severe fighting, in which General Rodman was mortally wounded, drove him back almost to the bridge.
In that charge General L. O'B. Branch, of North Carolina, was killed.
The pursuit was checked by the National artillery on the eastern side of the stream, under whose fire the reserves led by Sturgis advanced, and the Confederates did not attempt to retake the bridge.
Darkness closed the conflict here, as it did all along the line.
Hill came up just in time, apparently, to save Lee's army from capture or destruction.
Experts say that if Burnside had accomplished the passage of the bridge and the advance movement an hour earlier, or had Porter been sent a few hours sooner to the support of the hard-struggling right, that result would doubtless have ensued.
It is easy to conjecture what might have been.
We have to do only with what occurred.
Looking upon the event from that stand-point, we see darkness ending one of the most memorable days of the war because of its great and apparently useless carnage, for the result was only hurtful in the extreme to both parties.1 With the gloom of that night also ended the conflict known as the battle of Antietam, in which McClellan said (erroneously as to the number of troops) “nearly two hundred thousand men and five hundred pieces of artillery were for fourteen hours engaged.2 Our soldiers slept that night,” he said, “conquerors on a field won by their valor, and covered by the dead and wounded of the enemy.”
When the morning of the 18th dawned, both parties seemed willing not
1 For details of the Battle of Antietam (which the Confederates call the battle of Sharpsburg), see the reports of Generals McClellan and Lee, and their subordinate commanders. From these sources, and from written and oral statements from actors in the scene, the author has constructed the foregoing outline narrative.
The losses in that battle were very severe. From careful estimates, made after consulting the most reliable statements, it appears that McClellan's army was in round numbers 87,000 men, and that of Lee about 60,000. Couch's division of 5,000 men was too far away from the battle on that day to be available, having been sent, for some purpose, toward Harper's Ferry. McClellan reported his entire loss on that day at 12,469 men, of whom 2,010 were killed. He estimated the loss of Lee as much greater. No reliable official statement seems to have been made by the Confederate commander. The losses of the Unionists fell heavily upon particular brigades at particular points in the battle. That of the gallant Duryee, for example, returned from the field with not more than twenty men and four colors.--Statement to the author by General Duryee. See also History of Duryee's Brigade, by Franklin B. Hough, page 19. The carnage on the other side also fell on particular brigades. Jackson, in his report, says “more than half of the brigades of Lawton and Hays were either killed or wounded, and more than a third of Trimble's; and all the regimental commanders in those brigades, except two, were killed or wounded.”
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