The Union soldiers then rested for two hours. Around 3 p. Confederate General A. Hill's division arrived at approximately the same time from Harper's Ferry. With these reinforcements, the Confederates were able to drive Burnside's force back to the bridge. The Battle of Antietam drew to a close. On September 18, both armies remained on the battlefield. They negotiated a temporary truce, allowing each side to remove its wounded from the battlefield. On the evening of September 18, the Confederates began their retreat.
McClellan did not immediately pursue the Army of Northern Virginia. The Battle of Antietam was a Union victory. This Union victory also affected the Union war effort in another important way. Saving the Union had been the initial motivation for pursuing the war with the Confederacy, but on September 22, , President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It stated that slavery would end in all states still rebelling against the Union on January 1, Lincoln and several members of his cabinet were cautious as to the timing of the announcement of the Proclamation.
If the president moved to end slavery before a Union victory was won, Europeans, Confederates, and some in the Union might view this action as a desperate attempt to win support for the Union war effort. The Union victory at Antietam allowed the president to link slavery's demise with the preservation of the Union.
The Battle of Antietam and the resulting Emancipation Proclamation caused both anxiety and hope among Ohioans. Many Ohioans worried that Union victory in the war was further off than they hoped with Lee's invasion. Other Ohioans welcomed the Emancipation Proclamation and celebrated that slavery's demise was now a Union war aim.
But the garrison at Harpers Ferry did not behave as Lee expected, and the local topography forced Jackson to divide his corps into three columns. Lee struggled to reunite his army before McClellan arrived. Harpers Ferry finally capitulated on September 15, and except for A. His soldiers had been scattered across western Maryland from Hagerstown to Pleasant Valley by the heat, the forced marches, and the confusion of retreats.
Lee had asked too much of them. The Union troops surged forward, only to be driven back by desperate Confederate counterattacks. As the fighting on the Union right ebbed, it surged across the center. After repeated failed assaults against the main Confederate defensive position, which ran along a sunken road, one Union division was able to flank it, delivering deadly fire. Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, Burnside carried the bridge and was pressing the Confederates back toward Sharpsburg.
On the cusp of victory, however, his unit was struck on the flank by A. Lee was able to hold his position, but barely. Lee remained at Sharpsburg the next day, but McClellan refused to renew the battle. In addition, McClellan had a fresh reserve corps that was never committed. Under cover of darkness, Lee slipped away. When McClellan belatedly followed on September 19, his vanguard was repulsed at Shepherdstown. Lincoln was irate that McClellan had let Lee get away, but the president had the victory he needed for his Emancipation Proclamation as southern troops retreated from the North and were prevented from taking Washington, DC.
Had he not emerged at this time, the Civil War might well have ended in , with the seceded states returning to the Union and slavery intact. The second factor that changed the character of the war was the opportunity the battle provided Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, giving the Confederate states until January 1, , to give up the rebellion and keep their slaves.
By mid-summer , President Abraham Lincoln had the Emancipation Proclamation —a document declaring freedom for all slaves in the so-called rebellious states—ready to go. House of Representatives. General Robert E. After Lee thwarted the plan of General George B. Mitchell and Sergeant John M. Bloss, discovered a copy of Special Order with detailed Confederate troop movements, allegedly wrapped around three cigars.
And when Lee heard a copy of Special Order was missing, he knew his scattered army was vulnerable and rushed to reunite its units. The Battle of Antietam began at dawn on September 17 as the fog lifted.
Troops from both sides faced-off across a acre cornfield owned by David Miller. Confederate troops ferociously fought off offensive after offensive to prevent being overrun, turning the cornfield into a massive killing field.
Just eight hours in, there were over 15, casualties. Three hours later, Union troops had pushed the Confederates back and over 5, men were either dead or injured. The fighting was so gory Sunken Road earned a new name: Bloody Lane. As night fell, thousands of bodies littered the sprawling Antietam battlefield and both sides regrouped and claimed their dead and wounded.
Just twelve hours of intense and often close-range fighting with muskets and cannons had resulted in around 23, casualties, including an estimated 3, dead.
Unsupported and low on ammunition, he ultimately was forced to abandon his position. As opposed to the patchwork quality of the Army of the Potomac, the Army of Northern Virginia was a lean fighting machine. This was an army of combat veterans. Twenty-two units had been in five battles. Only around 21 percent of the regiments had fought in just one battle. Their commanders were hardened veterans too. James Longstreet and Thomas J. That would require legislation from the Confederate Congress.
The South Carolina—born Longstreet had a long military career that included combat in Mexico and against the Indians in Texas. At Sharpsburg his command held the Confederate center and right. Here was Maj. John Bell Hood, a Texan via Kentucky, who was a virtual pit bull in battle. His aggressive leadership played a prominent role in preventing the collapse of the Confederate left on the morning of September Another audacious commander in the campaign, Maj. This son of the western Virginia mountain region had earned his combat spurs early at First Manassas.
His brilliant Valley campaign in the spring of further solidified his greatness. It is believed that Lee had no more than 40, men at Sharpsburg. The months of campaigning and fighting had taken its toll.
The average Confederate regiment numbered men. Some had less. The 8th Georgia carried 85 officers and men into battle, while the 8th Virginia had 34 men and the 1st Louisiana Battalion numbered an amazing 17 combatants. The average Union soldier at Antietam would have been clothed in the standard dark-blue four-button blouse with light-blue trousers. But within this sea of blue could be found a smattering of other hues and styles.
McClellan took great pains to see that his army was reequipped following months of campaigning. This took place at the camps at Rockville and through the establishment of supply depots at Frederick and Hagerstown, Md. Between September 12 and October 25, , the army received more than , pairs of shoes and boots, 93, pairs of trousers, 10, blankets and numerous other supplies.
This influx of supplies was not a mere luxury or crass display of Yankee abundance. They were sorely needed after all the hard campaigning that summer.
For example, a few weeks after Antietam, the quartermaster of the I Corps was seeking more than 5, shoes for the unshod soldiers of that command. Numerous civilian eyewitness accounts bear this out. Their coats were made out of almost anything that you could imagine, butternut color predominating.
Their hats looked worse than those worn by the darkies. Many were barefooted; some with toes sticking out of their shoes and others in their stocking feet. Their blankets were every kind of description, consisting of drugget, rugs, bedclothes, in fact anything they could get, put up in a long roll and tied at the ends, which with their cooking utensils, were slung over their shoulders. On the eve of the battle, Snyder fled with his mother to a nearby farm.
Upon entering his home, he found the place a wreck, with doors and windows open, and drawers and closets ransacked. Heaps of ragged uniforms were on the floor, apparently exchanged for the cleaner clothes of the Snyder family. In one bedroom James found a naked Confederate soldier lying on the bed, his dirty, tattered uniform piled on the floor.
In the late summer of , many Confederate regiments were still operating under the so-called commutation system of clothing supply.
This system gave responsibility to each company commander for clothing his troops. The officer was to then seek reimbursement from the government. Individual Confederate states also undertook various measures to clothe their men, while private citizens got in on the act by raising money for uniforms. Meanwhile, the Confederate government was in the process of establishing quartermaster depots.
However, it was not until late and early , too late for Antietam, that Confederate authorities committed themselves to clothe their troops by direct government issue. Accordingly, a hodgepodge of uniforms was very much evident on the fields around Sharpsburg. Yet despite civilian accounts, the sparse photographic evidence that exists, mainly post-battle images of Confederate dead taken by Alexander Gardner, shows Confederates with short jackets, trousers and blanket rolls or knapsacks.
Most of the men in these grim photos have shoes. Most of these men got nowhere near the captured supplies there, however, since they were rushed to Sharpsburg for the battle. A rare image of Confederates in formation on the march taken by a local photographer in Frederick reveals what appear to be well-equipped soldiers wearing a wide variety of headgear.
Another interesting but inconclusive observation of Confederate uniforms was made by Union surgeon James L. Dunn in a letter to his wife after Antietam. I have yet to find a Rebel even meanly clad or shod.
They are as well shod as our own men. They are dressed in gray. Those shoes you made for me ripped all to pieces….
Our regiment used everything we had. I have no blanket nor any clothes but what I got. I have got the suit on that you sent me. They came in a good time. I like them very well. If I had a pair of shoes I would be the best clothed man in the regiment. Throughout the war, the Union infantrymen were usually better armed than their Rebel opponents. Antietam was no exception. The most common shoulder arm of the Yankee foot soldier was the Springfield rifle.
This does not mean that there was not some degree of diversity of arms in the Union ranks. For example, some units such as the 7th West Virginia were armed with the British-made Enfield rifled musket. The 20th New York carried the U. Model Mississippi rifle with saber bayonet. These included several types of rifled muskets, such as the.
Some of the men carried. Model Harpers Ferry rifle, the U. Model Mississippi rifle and the Austrian Lorenz rifle. However, one estimate places the number of. Although much is made of this lack of new weaponry, research shows that most of the opposing fire at Antietam was at a distance of around to yards, where smoothbore firearms were reasonably accurate.
In the end, supplying the types of ammunition needed for these weapons was a logistical nightmare for the Confederate ordnance department.
Field artillery played a major tactical role at Antietam. Reports of the number of Union guns engaged in the battle vary from to There were of these guns employed in the fight.
Accurate up to one mile, they were also deadly when firing canister at shorter ranges. Napoleons were used en masse with awful effect to break up several Confederate attacks on the north end of the battlefield in the morning phase. A significant portion of the Union artillery consisted of state-of-the-art long-range rifled guns such as the and pounder Parrott.
Forty-two of the former and 30 of the latter pieces were brought to bear on the Confederate lines with deadly effect.
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