A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [174]
Ill fortune was, however, dogging Lee at every turn. His army should have had at least 15,000 more men, but many had straggled to the point of desertion or refused on principle to invade the North. Lee himself began the incursion with a nasty fall that left both his hands in splints. Generals Jackson and Longstreet also suffered minor but incapacitating injuries. All three had to be conveyed through Maryland in ambulances rather than gallantly leading their men on horseback. As the shoeless army tramped its way through the quiet countryside, it became clear that the Marylanders would not rise up or even offer breakfast to the Confederates. The men had to feed themselves with unripe apples and green corn snatched from the fields.18 Lee naturally worried about his supply line. Aware that there were Federal forces behind him that could cut off his army, he decided that he would have to neutralize the threat they posed before he proceeded farther north. He would have to detach his small army into even smaller, autonomous divisions—a risky maneuver, but it had worked against Pope, and Lee believed that he had the initiative.
On September 13, the 27th Indiana Volunteers trailed into an abandoned Confederate camp outside Frederick. Four of them lay down on the grass to talk and rest in the late summer haze. One soldier, the future president of Oregon State University, noticed a yellow envelope lying in the field.19 Inside, the group found three cigars and Lee’s detailed plans for the next four days. The document, entitled Special Orders 191, was speedily relayed up the chain of command to McClellan. Almost as quickly, a Confederate sympathizer galloped off to report the dreadful news. At first, McClellan believed the orders were a trick, but a captain from Indiana recognized the handwriting and could vouch that the copyist on Lee’s staff had been a friend before the war.20 “I have all the plans of the rebels, and will catch them in their own trap,” McClellan telegraphed Lincoln. “Will send you trophies.”21
McClellan delayed his move for two days, even though his 95,000-strong Army of the Potomac was facing a Confederate force of only 18,000. By September 16, Lee had managed to reunite two-thirds of his divided army and take up a position around a quiet Maryland village named Sharpsburg. About a mile away, on the other side of Antietam Creek, McClellan’s soldiers gathered in readiness. “Our Brigade stole into position about half-past 10 o’clock on the night of the 16th,” recalled a private in Company G of the 9th New York Volunteers. “No lights were permitted, and all conversation was carried on in whispers.” Their place in the line was inside a thin cornfield that sloped down toward a creek. They sat down on the plowed earth and watched dark moving masses in the distance. “There was something weirdly impressive yet unreal,” the private continued, “in the gradual drawing together of those whispering armies under cover of the night—something of awe and dread, as always in the secret preparation for momentous deeds.”22 The fighting began as the first rays of dawn revealed the countryside. At first there was sporadic firing, which grew louder and heavier as pockets of engagement blossomed into fields of thunder and flying debris.
Map.11 Antietam or Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862
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As in previous battles, the landscape imposed itself on the fighting. “At Antietam it was a low, rocky ledge, prefaced by a corn-field,” wrote a Union soldier. “There were woods, too, and knolls, and there other corn-fields; but the student of that battle knows one cornfield only—the corn-field … about it and across