CHAPTER XI.

THE BATTLE OF THE ANTIETAM.

By the morning of the 15th of September the two corps of Sumner, the Second and the Twelfth, had closed up on the east side of South Mountain with the two corps of Burnside, the First and the Ninth, the last two occupying the range where they had fought on the day before, at Fox's and Turner's Gaps. The pickets of Burnside's corps pushed forward at daylight and found that the enemy had gone. The four corps therefore descended unopposed into Pleasant Valley, near the town of Boonsboro', from which the pass is sometimes called Boonsboro' Gap, the Confederates naming the action there the battle of Boonsboro', while the Federals name it the battle of South Mountain.

It ought not to be doubted that, with mobility equal to that of European armies of the first class, as witnessed in many wars, with only from seven to eight miles, or, at farthest, in case of detours, ten miles to march, and with the enormous disproportion of numbers between the Federal and Confederate forces present, McClellan could, by a forced march at daylight from the passes of South Mountain, have been able, despite the shortness of the autumnal day, to put the small force of Lee behind the Antietam to utter rout. But mobility in armies lies far less in the locomotive powers of the men than in the will of the commander. As the head is, so is the body destined to prevail or suffer. There is no truer saying of Napoleon's

than that, in the conduct of war, there is not so much need of men as of a man.

From seven to eight miles in a straight line, to reach the stream called the Antietam, was the distance which McClellan had to march after debouching between eight and nine o'clock in the morning from the South Mountain Range. The army was in the north end of Pleasant Valley, beyond which, towards the west, continuing beyond the town of Boonsboro', is the valley of the Antietam, confined between the line on the one side where Elk Ridge coming from the south has dwindled away to a lower height, and that, on the other side, defined by the low ranges of hills beyond Antietam Creek. Beyond the Antietam, which is crossed by four bridges, and had, at the low stage of water then prevailing, several fords, is the Potomac, about two miles off, with Lee's line of retreat to the left, at the town of Shepherdstown on its right or farther bank. The course of the river and the creek, about two miles apart, are about the same, slightly east of north, and in the loop formed by creek and river, about midway between the two, lies the town of Sharpsburg, after which the Confederates named the approaching battle, the Federals calling it the battle of Antietam. Resting his right on a sharp westerly bend of the Antietam, Lee's line of battle at first passed in front of the town of Sharpsburg along the range of hills bordering its west bank, his left stretching away backward in a long curve to the Potomac.

The force which McClellan had in hand was his whole army, except the corps of Franklin, the division of Couch, both now at Crampton's Gap, and the division of General Andrew A. Humphreys, left at Frederick. McClellan's full force on leaving Washington was eighty-five thousand men. Allowing for those absent with Franklin and Humphreys, and for stragglers, he could not have had in hand

less than sixty thousand men when he debouched from the South Mountain Range, while Lee's three divisions of infantry with him did not number more than seventeen thousand men. It would seem that he ought to have crushed Lee's army before the sun set that night. But what person of experience has not seen in life those who are stimulated by some extraordinary circumstance or outside personal pressure, and who have under that stress seemed to act with resolution, and then, that being spent, have immediately relapsed into their veritable selves, nothing being more persistent than character? So McClellan exhibited for a brief moment some appreciation of the great reward held out to adequate endeavor, but just at the moment when it needed but stretching forth to grasp it, he fell back into the full sway of his plodding circumspection, and let all that fortune offered escape him.

Fitzhugh Lee continuously resisted with his small cavalry command the advance of McClellan all the way from Boonsboro' to the Antietam. But it ought to have taken ten times the force he was able to muster seriously to delay the advance of sixty thousand men over a distance of between seven and eight miles. Meanwhile Lee, knowing his adversary much better than his adversary knew him, quietly took up his position behind the Antietam, and by the time that McClellan reached it, the day was too far spent for active operations.

If, however, it was necessary to pursue so slowly on the 15th as to bring it about that active operations must be postponed until the following day, would the most procrastinating general of whom we know, except McClellan, have postponed them for still another day? What reconnoissances and dispositions of troops could compensate for those which the enemy was making on the other side of the Antietam, and for the accessions of troops which he would