McClellan's plan of battle went awry from the beginning of the day. Burnside was not ordered until mid morning to launch his diversionary attack. When the order came, its execution was delayed until even later. Thus Hooker opened the battle against an army free to deal with him undistracted by other attacks. Nor was the XII Corps available yet to help with the Union's first major assault. Nonetheless, Hooker made ready to attack Jackson's flank of the Army of Northern Virginia. He ordered Ricketts and Doubleday to open the action, while Meade held his men in reserve.

At first light, Stuart's horse artillery opened up from its position on Nicodemus Hill and Hooker's gunners replied. (The desirability of eliminating Stuart's threat to his right never seems to have occurred to Hooker.) At first the Confederates held the initiative. Lawton drove Seymour's brigade out of the East Wood, but then Hooker went over to the attack. I Corps began its advance screened by a wood north of the Miller farm. Ricketts' division started southward through the Miller cornfield. On his right, Doubleday moved out toward the wood west of the Cornfield and along the Hagerstown Turnpike. As Ricketts' men moved through the tall corn, they carried their guns on their shoulders to avoid getting them entangled, but nothing so simple could preserve the coordination of this attack. Each brigade emerged separately from the corn to be wrecked by the fire of Lawton's veteran foot soldiers. To compound the confusion, two of Ricketts' brigadiers were put out of the fight. Brig. Gen. George Hartsuff fell seriously wounded, while Col. William Christian simply lost his nerve and fled the field on foot as the shells burst around him. (The average soldier would tolerate such an act from a foot soldier but not from an officer. Christian had to resign his commission after the battle was over.)

Lawton ordered a counterattack by Hay's Louisiana Tigers, but this force was decimated by artillery fire. Lawton was wounded, and his brigades had been reduced to cadres. Nonetheless, his effort had wrecked Ricketts' division, leaving Doubleday's flank vulnerable to attack.

Gibbon's Iron Brigade led Doubleday's advance into the Miller Orchard and the West Wood, where it collided with Col. Grigsby's Stonewall Brigade. More of Doubleday's brigades came up and J.R. Jones, commander of the Stonewall Division, fell wounded. Jones's successor, Gen. Starke, ordered a counterattack and then fell fatally wounded. This stroke, though it cost Jackson's old division dearly, slowed Doubleday's advance. Grigsby, who had inherited division command though only a colonel, had to pull his men back for regrouping.

Just when Hooker seemed to have a slight advantage, the Confederates seized the initiative once more. Lawton had sent for Hood, whose division had been placed in reserve after its encounter with Seymour's brigade on the previous evening. Hood was quick to respond; by 7:00 a.m. his men were passing through Lawton's thin ranks, deploying for a charge.

Although punished by artillery fire, Hood's men launched an attack which cleared the remnants of Rickett's division from the Cornfield. Doubleday's flank was turned, and his men began to retreat. Hooker committed his only fresh troops, two brigades of the Pennsylvania Reserves. They too were thrown into disorder, but assisted by Gibbon's brigade and by Union gunners they halted the gray tide short of victory.

By that time the Cornfield was so thick with a smelly blanket of black powder smoke that one regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserves was ignored as they charged by until they fired a devastating volley into Hood's exposed flank. Hood's division was put out of the fight, causing its commander to tell an inquiring officer that he had left all of his men dead on the field. This sacrifice, however, was not made in vain. Doubleday's division was largely out of the fight, and Meade's was in little better condition. Dead and wounded from a dozen states were mingled in the fields and woodlots of the Miller and Nicodemus farms, and more would join them in the course of the bloody morning.

Although Hooker's and Jackson's men were fought out, fresh troops entered the fray. D.H. Hill fed three of his brigades into the Cornfield to help Hood. Mansfield's XII Corps, five small brigades, reached the Miller farm from the north. Mansfield, a white-haired officer of the old army, had lobbied in Washington for months until he received a field command. In this, his first action, Mansfield sought out Hooker, who asked for help in the fight for the Cornfield. Williams' division was assigned this task. While helping Williams deploy his men, a job better left to aides, Mansfield was mortally wounded His time as field commander had lasted only a few hours.

Alpheus Williams, succeeding to corps command, fed more troops into the fight. (Among the Union soldiers wounded was Corporal Mitchell, who had found the Lost Order.) For a time this effort did not seem to be sufficient, but the second division of XII Corps, under George Sears Greene, an elderly but tough graduate of West Point, appeared on the Confederate right flank. Greene's men pushed through the East Wood and the Cornfield, pushing Hill's and Hood's tired soldiers before them. Garland's brigade, already fought out at Fox's Gap, simply fled when one of Greene's regiments appeared on its right.

The other Confederate units pulled back in small clumps, firing back at the oncoming foe. As Greene pressed his advantage, S.D. Lee's gunners were forced to withdraw from their position near the Dunker Church. A Pennsylvania regiment from Williams' division, accompanying Greene's attack, gained possession of the small white church, which was found to be occupied by wounded Confederates.

Greene's attack might have broken Lee's left flank if fresh troops had been available to assist him. Hooker, however, had been wounded in the foot and forced to leave the field. Meade, his successor, was busy trying to restore order to I Corps' ranks. Williarns'division had become the present occupants of the Miller farm. McClellan had sent two divisions of Sumner's II Corps across the Antietam but Sumner, a brave but pigheaded old dragoon, lost control of the situation. Rushing ahead with Sedgwick's division, "Bull" Sumner lost track of French's division. Unable to find the wounded Hooker, Sumner brushed off Williams, who tried to brief him on the situation. Instead of moving to Greene's assistance, Sumner led Sedgwick's three brigades, one behind the other in long lines, across the Miller farm and into the West Wood, where disaster overtook them.

Lee, meanwhile, had taken advantage of internal lines to rush reinforcements to Jackson. McLaws' division was moved up from reserve, and Walker's men were relieved of their idle work of watching the lower fords of the Antietam. Some of these troops joined Jubal Early's brigade of Lawton's division in a flank attack on Sedgwick's division, fumbling its way through the trees and ledges of the West Wood. Rebel yells rising on their left flank reduced Sedgwick's veterans to panic. Many fled. Others fired wildly, often hitting comrades. Sedgwick fell wounded; and his division was swept out of the woods, out of the battle.

A strong contrast to this debacle was the small victory won by Greene, who repelled Walker's attack on his position and took more ground beyond the Dunker Church. Once more Greene looked about for help and found none. Eventually, their ammunition exhausted, the men of 2nd division XII Corps were ousted from their exposed position.

Meanwhile, French's division had drifted off southward into a confrontation with D.H. Hill's division. After being driven from the Cornfield, most of Hill's surviving men had returned to the Sunken Road. "Blinky" French, so called from his way of peering at people, was another brave but short sighted officer of the Sumner school. Lacking any guidance from his Corps Commander, French advanced his brigades across the Roulette farm, despite an encounter with an angry swarm of bees, to attack Hill's natural trench. Each brigade in turn went up against Hill's command, which waited until feet could be seen under the smoke of battle before firing devastating volleys. Each of French's brigades fell back shattered.

In support of his embattled center, Lee concentrated masses of artillery behind the Sunken Road. Despite long range fire from McClellan's Reserve Artillery across Antietam Creek, these gunners lent effective support to Hill's men. The counterbattery fire they suffered throughout the battle was such that the Confederate batteries long remembered the battle around Sharpsburg as, in S.D. Lee's words, "Artillery Hell." In this cannonade, Sharpsburg itself suffered serious damage from the fire of Union guns, but its citizens hid in their cellars or nearby caves, thus escaping serious injury or loss of life.

Peering into the smoke of battle from his headquarters near the Middle Bridge, McClellan seemed to feel little need to inspect the field in person or to move his reserve artillery in closer. When, Morell's division of V Corps arrived behind the guns, however, the commander did release Richardson's division of II Corps to join the fight.

Israel Richardson was one of the most colorful characters in the Army of the Potomac. His sloppy dress and profane speech did not disguise a record of hard fighting against Confederate troops and incompetent Federal commanders. (It was Richardson who charged Dixon Miles with being drunk at First Manassas.) At about 10:30 a.m., eager to enter the fray, Richardson pushed his men across the nearby ford and deployed to attack the Confederates in the Sunken Road. First into the fray was the Irish Brigade, which went into each fight behind a green flag after receiving absolution from its chaplain Father Corby, a Holy Cross priest from Notre Dame. Hill's men opened fire on this unit, knocking its commander Thomas Meagher, from his horse and opening gaps in the ranks.

The Irish Brigade's attack was repulsed, but Lee, deciding that Hill needed help, committed Anderson's division, his last reserves, to this sector of the field. Although this was a sound decision, it almost brought ruin onto the Army of Northern Virginia. Anderson was wounded, and Pryor, his successor, lost control of the division. Some men wandered off, while others began crowding), Hill's weary few. When one brigadier tried to readjust his position, his men began to fall back. In the confusion, the right flank of Hill's position melted away.

Richardson was not about to lose such an opportunity. He rode forward to drive Caldwell's brigade into this newly opened gap. Inquiring of the whereabouts of Caldwell, Richardson was told that the brigadier was off behind a haystack. Swearing, "God damn the field officers!" the division commander rushed the nearest units into battle. Led by Francis Barlow, a young lawyer turned soldier, two regiments of Caldwell's brigade, 61st and 64th New York, got across the Sunken Road and turned the trench into a deathtrap.

At about the same time, Rodes' brigade, at the left end of the line, experienced a similar disaster. When Col. John Brown Gordon, one of the toughest fighters in Lee's army, went down wounded, his successor in command of the 6th Alabama made a disastrous effort to realign his men. Almost without warning, Robert Rodes saw his brigade fall into confusion and begin retreating.

The Confederate center had all but melted away. Only the artillery stood between Richardson's men and Sharpsburg. At one point Longstreet sent his staff to help man the guns, while he held the reins of their horses. More importantly, Longstreet and D.H. Hill raked up such troops as they could find and committed them to a series of counterattacks against the flanks of Richardson's division. Harvey Hill placed himself at the head of one group and shouted, "Attention! Charge!" Hill had not gone far before he realized that everyone behind him had fallen or fled, so he went back to look for more men to keep up the fight.

Lee's First Offensive The Maryland Campaign of 1862

Introduction
Harper's Ferry
Battle of Antietam: Union Attack
Antietam: Fortune Favors the Confederates
After the Battle
George Sears Greene: Profile (very slow: 211K)
Lee's Invasions: Jumbo Map (extremely slow: 326K)