Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam

8. The Bridges of the Antietam

8( The Bridges of the Antietam in 1910, maryland author Helen Ashe Hays wrote about a gentle stream flowing through Washington County, Maryland, “whose name will be famous as long as America endures, the placid Antietam.” To her, writing long after the bloody events of 1862, “it is a beautiful, wide stream, meandering slowly through a country of great beauty and interest.” Sycamores lean across it, water willows mark its course, “with soft masses of grayish foliage while they hide it from view.” Tangles of blackberries and wild roses, papaws and hazel bushes, elder and poison ivy fringe its banks. Its waters do not sparkle, as often they carry sediment, “which gives the stream a thick and turgid appearance.” Still, this gifted observer decided, the Antietam “is peacefully beautiful, and flows through one of the richest farming lands in America.” Its beauty did not dictate its fame in mid-September 1862.1 In fact, Southerners would remember these environs by another name, Sharpsburg, taken from the nearby town occupied by their army. Ultimately both names became synonymous with the bloodiest single day of the war, a day that spread horror across rocky slopes and rills, corn and wheat fields, into farm lanes and beneath rail and stone fences. More than twenty-two thousand Americans would fall killed or wounded between sunrise and sunset in that autumn harvest of destruction. The result would mean different things to differ- the bridges of the antietam | 229 ent people. Recalling the words of one participant, historian Stephen W. Sears termed it a “landscape turned red,” while Professor James McPherson used the phrase “crossroads of freedom,” suggesting a different take for “the battle that changed the course of the Civil War.” Above all it was truly “America’s Deadliest Day.” Not that bloodshed was necessarily new to western Maryland. German and English settlers had hacked their living from among the limestone ridges between North and South mountains. There had been Indian fights and later duels over whiskey and commercial matters by these backcountry people. Then the National road between Baltimore and the Ohio country had brought a calming influence. Local and national government had partnered to construct thirteen arched crossings of the Antietam to enhance the community’s profitability. In September 1862 those bridges dictated how a great battle would be fought between George B. McClellan and Robert E. Lee.2 True, the story encompassed more than just bridges and a creek. Sharpsburg itself lay in a convenient crook of the Potomac between the river and the Antietam’s egress near an old iron furnace. More than thirteen hundred residents of the town related their calling to surrounding farmland. McClellan himself would later declare that farmland to be “well adapted to defensive warfare,” with its wooded knolls and hollows, ridges, and stone outcroppings interspersed among cornfields. The crossroads town posed something of a choke point for an army’s transiting to Virginia as well as an impediment to any attacker. Four stone bridges and perhaps five farm fords controlled access to the Sharpsburg pocket from the east. Such crossings also would channel attackers into killing grounds for defenders using the town as a backstop. These bridges, from south to north, included the one at the Iron Works (dating to 1832) that carried the road from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry; the Rohrbach or Lower Bridge (constructed in 1836) just outside town to the southeast; the Orndorff or Middle Bridge (built in 1824) on the main Sharpsburgto -Boonsboro turnpike; and the Hitt or Upper Bridge (added in 1830), which handled the Keedysville thoroughfare to Williamsport. These structures offered easy passage to either side of the stream. Meanwhile sleepy Sharpsburg sat behind a high ridge protecting southern and eastern approaches but less protected by the more rolling terrain on the Hagerstown road to the north. Lee’s army occupied this ground on September 15. With McClellan’s pursuit only a 230 | the bridges of the antietam half-dozen miles behind them across the Antietam, the impending battle was inevitable.3 What was not visible to McClellan from his observation point on the eastern bank of the Antietam required investigation. So he necessarily lost time to this task late on September 15. Praising the general and his army for their South Mountain victory, President Lincoln had specifically called for destroying the enemy “if possible.” That opportunity lay within McClellan’s grasp that afternoon...