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Dead of the 14th North Carolina in the Sunken Road*

One hundred fifty-five years ago this day, the seventeenth of September in 1862, occurred one of the great and seminal events of the American Civil War.  The battle is often described as a “watershed”, in that what came after would forever be different from what had come before.  It was on this day that the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George B. McClellan, slammed into the rebel Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of the incomparable Robert E. Lee, and very nearly destroyed it.   The Battle of Antietam, named by the North for Antietam Creek, and the South for the nearby village of Sharpsburg, Maryland, occurred in an area not much more than six square miles, along what is now the Sharpsburg Pike, beginning in the north in a cornfield near the Dunker’s Church, and ending at the aforementioned Antietam Creek along its southern edge. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, on a day more than twenty years ago on a muggy September morning, I ventured off of I-95 and my journey back from my parents’ house to Camp Lejeune, to make the 30-ish mile trip to the Antietam battlefield.   As was my habit, I would re-familiarize myself with a battle before walking the ground, and I had done so for this occasion.  I wanted to see the ground during the same time of year in which the battle was fought, and had not had the opportunity the previous year. 

Though I toured other parts of the battlefield in which bravery and sacrifice were plentiful, walking the cornfield along what was then Hagerstown Pike, seeing Dunker’s Church (still scarred by shot and ball), and the famous Burnside Bridge, I was drawn, in a way that can only be experienced, to the famous Sunken Road, a place now known as “Bloody Lane”.   Here was a place where the burning ferocity of the battle reached its crescendo.  The fight for the Sunken Road was one of the most savage actions of the entire war.  During it, two divisions of the Union II Corps, French’s Division on the right of the line and Richardson’s on the left, attacked south.  It was here that the brigades of D. H. Hill’s Division of Longstreet’s Corps occupied a road cut only a few hundred yards long.  Troops from Georgia and Alabama were on the left and center, respectively, while BG George Anderson’s Brigade of North Carolina troops on the right of Hill’s line. 

Hill’s Division initially repulsed the Federals all along the line.  However, “repulse” didn’t mean in September 1862 what it once did.  Instead of withdrawing to regroup for another attack, giving both the offense and defense time to recover, French’s blue troops instead set down in whatever cover they could find or quickly dig, and continued hammering and being hammered by the entrenched enemy.  There was hardly a let-up in the intensity of the firing.  Heavy casualties were inflicted on both sides.  Sumner, commanding the Union II Corps, then sent in the brigades of Richardson’s Division.  Among them was the famous Irish Brigade, composed primarily of the 63^rd, 69^th, and 88^th New York, led by Colonel Thomas Meagher.  The North Carolina regiments and the New York regiments blazed away at each other from just a few yards apart, the men in blue suffering terribly until reinforcements from Caldwell’s Brigade managed to flank the rebel troops.  Then, along with the Irish Brigade, the survivors at any rate, Caldwell’s men raked the North Carolina troops with a withering flanking fire, turning the depressed thoroughfare into a charnel house. 

Dead of Meagher's Irish Brigade*

After holding for more than an hour, the men of Hill’s Division could stand no more, and began to withdraw, leaving the dubious protection of the sunken road and making their way south toward the small farm.  The journey would be savage and deadly, as the Union troops who had never left musket range, poured a murderous fire onto the exposed rebels.  Longstreet’s line had been broken, however temporarily, and the opportunity was there for exploitation.

Had McClellan understood the situation and sent in his reserves, the Army of the Potomac may have had a chance to break the Army of Northern Virginia, (this was also likely true before AP Hill’s timely arrival later in the day to blunt the Federal attack across Burnside Bridge).   Despite the indecision in McClellan’s actions, Lee was forced to withdraw from Maryland, accomplishing little except incurring losses he could not afford. 

The lack of aggressive exploitation by the Army of the Potomac when they had Lee in a pinch is an all-too-familiar tale, but is ancillary to the significance of the fight at Antietam.  Such opportunities for victory would come again for the Army of the Potomac, at Gettysburg, and at Petersburg, and on each occasion the Union generalship could never quite ever bring itself to move quickly and decisively.   No, the significance of Antietam, exemplified by the savagery of the Sunken Road, was that the ferocity of the fighting represented a permanent change in the character of the war itself.  The stubborn valor exhibited by the respective armies at Antietam would raise the cost on both sides in dead and wounded to levels unimaginable in 1861.  

The men in blue uniforms, while not always as skilled as their rebel foes, and doubtlessly not as well-led at the levels of command that mattered, had at Antietam proven conclusively that they lacked nothing in the way of raw courage.  They had endured the worst the ANV could inflict on them, and somehow moved forward into the storm of shot and shell.  They had at the Sunken Road rousted entrenched veteran troops of the enemy, despite lacking the numerical advantage conventional wisdom demanded for such an assault.  They had mauled D. H. Hill’s brigades, forcing them back to Piper Farm.  They had handed the opportunity for victory, not just at Antietam but possibly for the war itself, to their commanders.  That their commanders did not press the advantage was crushingly disappointing, but the troops had fought their enemy in an even fight and more than held their own.  Their performance heartened the men in the ranks, for they knew that it meant (as both sides realized) that they could and would likely do so again.  The largely volunteer forces that made up the Army of the Potomac demonstrated the grit and determination and endurance and bravery needed to match Lee’s army. 

While the battle itself could be considered a tactical draw, such a realization must have much discomfited Lee and his commanders.  When taken with the immediately-preceding action at South Mountain, casualties on both sides in the two battles were enormous.  Ominously for Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, they were also nearly equal.  (About 14,500 for each side.)  With a much smaller force at his disposal, it was clear to Lee and his Lieutenants that many more such actions would end in the destruction of his army and the end of the Confederacy. 

Aftermath of the Fight Looking North at the Sunken Road*

Another aspect to the fight at the Sunken Road was the extended duration of the carnage.  The fierce fighting had lasted more than three hours.  Seldom, if ever to that point in the history of warfare in the age of musketry, had such a protracted slaughter been endured by the men of both sides.  European observers were flabbergasted by the ability of both lines of troops to absorb such punishment and continue fighting at close quarters.  The Sunken Road was the first of such large-scale bloodletting, but there would be many more to come.  At Gettysburg in July of 1863, Meade’s veteran troops fought and soundly defeated Lee and turned back his foray into Pennsylvania, at frightful cost.  A year and a day after Antietam, in September of 1863, Union General George Thomas and his Corps had held Horseshoe Ridge at Chickamauga for seven hours against Braxton Bragg’s superior Rebel forces, as his men and their foes blazed away at each other at close range.  A French observer of Chickamauga commented then that no European army could stand such punishment without shattering completely. 

The toll of the ghastly struggle at the Sunken Road is indicated by the casualty lists among those who led their men into the fight.  The action had cost D. H. Hill five of his Brigade Commanders wounded, with BG George Anderson’s being mortal, eight Regimental Commanders killed, and fourteen wounded (one mortally), producing a staggering casualty rate among Regimental Commanders and higher of 61%.  A single Regimental commander in Anderson’s North Carolina Brigade escaped death or wounding.  BG Robert Rodes, himself wounded while commanding the Georgians on Hill’s left, ended the fight with just two unwounded Regimental Commanders.  For the Union, in Sumner’s II Corps, two Division Commanders were wounded, Israel Richardson mortally.  The Commander of the Irish Brigade, Meagher, was also wounded, along with two other Brigade Commanders.  Three Regimental Commanders were killed, and thirteen wounded.  Federal casualties among Regimental Commanders and higher numbered nearly one in three.

The Army of the Potomac chased and sparred with the Army of Northern Virginia through the remainder of 1862 and 1863, trying unsuccessfully to bring the elusive Lee to decisive battle.  Each time the Federals were frustrated, and often stung by the fierceness of the Rebel counterstrokes.  In May of 1864, however, command of all Union forces was assumed by Ulysses Grant.  It was Grant, traveling as a shadow to Meade (still technically in command of the Army of the Potomac), who succeeded in grabbing hold of Lee’s shrinking but still formidable Army and never letting go.  Through the horrors of the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse, Grant hammered Lee whenever he could, eventually trapping the Army of Northern Virginia in entrenchments around Petersburg, a siege Lee was powerless to break.  From there, on a forage for food, Lee was caught in the open with his weakened army at Appomattox, and in April of 1865, surrendered his forces to Grant. 

Such an end, and the path to it, was paved with the lives of more than 650,000 souls.  Such effusion of blood was unthinkable to either side in the summer of 1861.   But after Antietam, those who understood the significance of what had occurred could not have imagined much less.  The terrible trail of shattered corpses which passed through Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor, and the Crater, and finally to Appomattox some two and a half years later, began at the Sunken Road at Antietam on this day, one hundred and fifty-five year ago.  URR here.

*All photographs are the work of the incomparable Alexander Gardner.