Originally aired on September 19, 1997 - In part 160 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes the events of September 17, 1862, the bloodiest one-day battle in the nation’s history.
#160 – Antietam
The bloodiest one-day battle in national history took place on September 17, 1862 in western Maryland. The opponents were the two major forces in the Civil War. The Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia commanded by General Robert E. Lee.
Earlier that month Lee had begun the first invasion of the north. A success on Union soil might well bring European recognition and aid that could life the weaker southern states to victory in the war. McClellan’s forces came on the scene as Lee was consolidating his army at Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Lee positioned his 40,000 soldiers in a 4-mile arc on high ground that overlooked the enemy at Antietam Creek. McClellan’s 70,000 Federals formed an arc of their own in front of Lee’s lines. The first gunfire came with daylight on that Wednesday and the thunder of battle would not stop until darkness fell.
If McClellan with his superior numbers had attacked simultaneously from one end of the line to the other he undoubtedly would have smashed the Confederate position and won the battle, if not the war. Instead, McClellan opted for the worst scenario – to assault one point at a time. Such tactics enabled Lee to shift units here and there along the shorter inner lines of defense.
What followed was a day of shear concentrated violence undiluted by generalship. It was headlong combat fought in cornfields and woods and on the open slopes that came up from muddy Antietam Creek. The participants were veteran soldiers. Few cut and ran until they had been fought out or until formations had been blown apart. Valor and sacrifice marked every minute.
The battle began on the Confederate left. Three Union corps banked one against the other sought to drive the Confederates from their anchor on the Potomac River. Southerners fought from behind rocks and fences and used whatever protection the terrain afforded. Somehow, after three hours of vicious combat the Southern line still held.
The second phase of the battle was against the Confederate center which was a sunken road that zig-zagged along the reverse slope of the hill. Southerners packed in the road delivered some of the heaviest musket fire witnessed during the entire war.
Waves of Federals sweeping down the hill toward the road melted away as sheets of gunfire tore ranks to shreds. Billy Yanks finally seized the road but could advance no farther. The dead lay in and around the road so thickly that it has been known since as “Bloody Lane”.
McClellan’s third series of went into Burnside’s bridge sector against the Confederate right. Federals fought their way inch-by-inch up high ground. They gained the crest only to come under a thunderous flank attack by A. P. Hill’s Confederate Division which had double-timed from Harper’s Ferry fast enough to save Lee’s army.
The sun, little more than a red ball amid thick battle smoke, finally set that day. Slowly the fighting stopped. As always in its place came the groans and screams from thousands of wounded men scattered for miles over the land.
American soldiers never fought harder than on that September day. Over 7,000 were killed and 16,000 wounded. Some 23,000 soldiers had fallen in twelve hours. By contrast, on D-Day in World War II American forces suffered 6,000 losses.
Lee returned to Virginia with a defeated army. Lincoln had the opportunity now to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Thereby making the end of slavery a twin goal with the saving of the Union. If Antietam was not the decisive battle of the Civil War it at least ensured that America would never be the same again.