In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

14 “Put on the War Paint!” With a Pelham on each flank, I believe I could whip the world. Stonewall Jackson — As they awakened on the morning of Wednesday, September 17, the 1,300 civilians who lived in and around the sleepy town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, must have realized that their attractive countryside would soon harvest a grisly battle. Two opposing armies, only a few thousand yards apart, sat poised to clash in the surrounding woodlands and fields. Robert E. Lee had meticulously placed his lines in a defensive stance to repel any attacks from the insuperable numbers of McClellan. Lee’s left extended north of Sharpsburg along Hagerstown Pike, where Jackson’s depleted forces hunkered on the property of two area farmers, Alfred Poffenberger and David R. Miller. Although no entrenchments had been dug and the ground appeared relatively flat, the perception remained deceiving from afar. Numerous low spots and swales dented the soil while limestone outcroppings, mostly imperceptible to the Federals in the distance, protruded above the landscape. Lee’s middle, anchored by the veterans of the fighting at South Mountain and under the command of D. H. Hill, stood 1,500 yards northeast of Sharpsburg along an irregular and unnamed sunken road. This road, actually little more than a rutted dirt path, served the William Roulette family to the north of it and the Henry Piper family to the south as a means of transporting harvested crops to a gristmill. Beginning roughly at Hagerstown Pike, the sunken road traversed eastward and then veered sharply southward to Boonsboro Pike. Parts of it had fallen away to more than a man’s height, offering a pocket of strength to Hill’s undermanned brigades. Lee’s right rested south of the town. There the brigades of David R. Jones defended a bluff overlooking picturesque Antietam Creek, meandering north and south below them. Rohrbach Bridge, named for Henry Rohrbach, who lived nearby, spanned the stream and provided passage over the shallow water. From his headquarters, just west of Sharpsburg, Lee could supervise the day’s activities from a centralized location. Lee’s selected position would serve his army well with one major exception: the Potomac River lay to his rear, blocking a possible escape route, leaving the only accessible course to Virginia more than an hour’s march to the south at Boteler’s Ford. McClellan had established his headquarters at the Philip Pry house, located east of 156 / Chapter 14 Antietam Creek.The high ground afforded him the capability of watching the upcoming battle from a distance of more than a mile away. McClellan admitted, however , in a letter to his wife that Lee “possessed an immense advantage in knowing every part of the ground, while I knew only what I could see from a distance.”1 Before dawn, Robert E. Lee dispatched a rider to A. P. Hill at Harpers Ferry with orders to dispense with his activities there and immediately move his division to Sharpsburg. Hill left at 7:30, but he faced seventeen rugged miles of marching, a good eight hours, even for the accomplished “Light Division” under his command. By 3:00 a.m. most of the Confederate forces at Sharpsburg stood in readiness for the awaited Federal attack. Pelham, still stationed on Nicodemus Heights, arranged his gunners for action, unaware that the ridge he held would be so fiercely vital to the existence of Lee’s left flank that morning. Deploying his guns at a perpendicular angle from whence the Federal attack would commence, Pelham would have clear shots into the advancing enemy and could dominate the battlefield immediately to his front. Stonewall Jackson, recognizing the extreme value of Pelham’s position , decided to send three additional Virginia units—the Staunton, Alleghany, and Danville batteries—raising Pelham’s firepower to approximately fifteen guns. More amazingly, the powerful Federal long-range rifled artillery atop Porterstown Ridge could reach all other Confederate artillery positions on the field that day with the exception of those planted on Nicodemus Heights, some 4,300 yards distant.2 Time crept by slowly, inexorably. Finally, the sun arose at 5:43, with the temperature standing at sixty-five degrees. By mid-afternoon, with an additional ten degrees,3 it should have yielded a gorgeous, late summer Maryland day. Within minutes, however, shortly after daybreak, the sound of guns promised to spoil the splendor of the setting, creating scenes of unfathomable horror. Joseph Hooker’s First Corps of the Army of...

Share