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By Root 1795 0

objectives, had been issued to all his commanders, and when they began to move away, units of the Federal Army had felt their way cautiously out, moving slowly over the ground the Confederates had left. It was here that a pair of soldiers, walking the abandoned camps, found a prize, three precious cigars, rolled up inside a piece of paper. They may have considered the cigars more valuable than the paper, but had the good sense to turn it over to an officer, who quickly took it to McClellan’s headquarters. It was a copy of Special Order 191. So now there were no more ghosts, no great, unseen obstacles to McClellan’s mission. He knew Lee’s plan, his troop strengths, and their positions: that his army had been divided, Jackson to Harper’s Ferry, and Longstreet moving north into Maryland.

Now they were marching in a great blue line, and Chamberlain rode the grand horse, crested the small rolling mounds, could see the vast army in a long curving line in front of him, the dark blue snake spotted by patches of white and brown, clusters of wagons and cannon. Behind him he saw more, much more of the same, his own troops, and behind them, a long cloud of thick dust, the rest of the great army.

They marched through farmlands, fields of corn, some just picked. The farmers, anticipating the destruction from a hundred thousand marching troops, had made a frantic effort to save what they could, because they did not believe the army’s assurances.

Maryland was a neutral state, and though most were against the cause of the rebels, they did not welcome the blue-coated troops as their own. They did not want this war fought on their lands. But if they protested and anguished over the presence of the great blue masses, they regarded the move northward by Lee’s rebel army as even worse, a hostile invasion, a violation. The warm welcome from the liberated people of the state that Lee had so expected was nowhere in evidence. And so both armies were now on neutral ground.

McClellan was moving with unusual speed, to avoid panic in the North, a speed that Lee did not anticipate, and when the armies began to find each other, Lee spread his greatly outnumbered troops along a small tributary of the Potomac, Antietam Creek, and waited for the assault McClellan was pushing toward him.

In Maryland, September is still summer, and there had been no break from the heat. Chamberlain rode in a thick daze, his body moving with a slow rhythm with the steps of his horse. There was no breeze, and he felt as if there was no air at all, just a thin mist of dry dust. He could see down to the surface of the road, saw the moving feet of the men in front of him, saw little puffs kick up from each foot, the tiny clouds rising slowly, coming together into one continuous line of hot, dry, choking dirt. Most of the cloud did not quite reach him, as it did the men on the ground, he was just high enough to escape most of it, but he knew the men behind him were breathing nothing but, and he felt guilty, avoided looking down at the hoofprints of his own horse, knew he was helping to choke his own men.

He looked out across a cornfield, wondered, Why don’t we just . . . move over there, no dust? But he knew there was a reason, some reason, and thought, Of course, fences, and ditches, and we do not march for the convenience of the men.

Ames rode beside him, had said nothing for a long hour or more. Chamberlain wanted to look at him, wondered if Ames was sweating as much as he was, but thought, No, keep it to the front. So he drifted off again, now began to think of Maine, knew it was a bad idea, could not help it. September . . . the cool streams, the cool shade, his mother’s cool apple cider . . . He sat up straight. Stop that!

Behind him the heat was pressing his men down hard, and men were falling out on the side of the road, lagging behind. This was their first real march, and if they were sturdy and fit and strong, they were not ready for this heat. The officers behind had tried to keep them in line, and there were shouts and cursing, but it had stopped now. The veterans