Along the Hagerstown Pike with the Iron Brigade: Unknown Antietam 159

hey everybody welcome back we know we had some connectivity problems on the last one so we're trying to go live again uh and we'll hope it'll all work you're with the american battlefield trust this is antietam 159 and we're trying to bring you less known spots of antietam and i think this is also one of them i don't think a lot of people come here i'm gary edelman of the american battlefield trust we've got chris white temporarily behind the camera and elise shooting and a bunch of other guests with us today one of whom you'll uh meet in just a few minutes so we are standing just north of the cornfield or stark avenues neither of those were here during the battle you are looking northward toward the david r miller farm you might be able to see some of those buildings up there in other words on september 17th in the morning you're looking toward the union position where joseph hooker's first corps was positioned and as we said in the last video they made a general movement over here along the hagerstown pike that you might be able to see off to your left and in and through the cornfield around there so that's the general axis going on here this is terrible fighting i mean we're talking about four hours of continual slaughter going on around the corn field on what we call the epicenter south of it along the hagerstown pike and in the east woods and surrounding this is just terrible stuff and one of the things that you like to stand here to do because i don't think a lot of people come over from the cornfield or up from the hagerstown pike to see it is you know that there's alexander gardner took one of his northernmost photos here on september probably 20th 1862. you can see a burial party burying some of the soldiers that were here it's hard to tell on all of them but i we definitely have some union soldiers um among them here and i i think i have a close-up of this because i mean imagine you know you just fought this bloodiest day in american history and then you're a burial crew whether you involved in the fighting or not this is just a stunning photo and it was taken from right here you could look at the work of william a frasinito where he pinpoints all this and partly he uses one of the miller farm buildings you can't see it in this picture off in the distance and that's the barn you see right there so we can use these photos somehow if you can see a photo of 12 15 uh you know killed then you can imagine four wounded for every kill and you start to get an idea of what this might have looked like now there's all sorts of fighting going on here and we're going to talk about that as we go along uh both with chris white and our next guest uh kevin pollock so kevin is a licensed battlefield guide here at the antietam national battlefield i've known him for at least five years you've seen him on our videos already and man if i try to guess where he's working right now i think he works for prince william county oh okay i got it right at the bristow station battlefield um come on kevin tell us one of the vignettes of the story not a lot of people hear about kevin thank you gary um so we're here to talk about with battery b that you can see the guns behind us representing the guns of battery b the fourth united states artillery that are involved in the action they're part of the union first corps so they're involved in the action here along the hagerstown pike and the cornfield itself one of the union batteries that will lose the heaviest of any battery on the battlefield here on september 17th of 1862 but they're also well known for one of the best human interest stories that takes place here at antietam and that's the story of johnny cook who was a 15 year old bugler he was a newspaper boy from ohio outside of cincinnati while he was uh or before the war rather and then while here uh the texas brigade part of john bel hood's division as they are surging up the hagerstown turnpike gets with an incredibly close range of those guns that you see there behind us it's a very close quarters action uh some of the guns when those guns go off they lift some of the fence rails of the hagerstown pike over 30 feet in the air a lot of the bat the artillery men are taking casualties and one of them that goes down is the captain of the battery joseph campbell and so as a 15 year old bugler cook is instructed to take campbell back to safety probably somewhere behind the miller barn there back to safety and then without orders cook returns to the battery and he helps his comrades to load and fire the guns in the face of uh hoods division georgians and some south carolinians and some texans as well that are positioned along the hagerstown turnpike and so for his heroics that day cook is eventually going to be awarded the medal of honor and he's one of the youngest to ever receive the medal of honor for his actions not just here at antietam but all time throughout the history of the united states military overall so cook is really an incredible story he will survive the civil war he goes on to serve in the army for quite a few years afterwards as well and then is ultimately going to be buried in arlington national cemetery but uh he's really gets a start if you will into his military career here with the heroics that he performs here 159 years ago and a couple of hours ago beyond that i think chris is going to come on now all right it's the round robin that's right we just threw kevin right in front of the camera so uh thanks for for coming out we hope that an antietam guide might know something about antietam and he proved us right um so we're standing along the side of the the hagerstown pike now we're actually standing between a few different roads today off to my right is the modern day hagerstown pike that's the bypass that would not have been here in 1862 we also have stark avenue this would be some of the avenues that would have been coming through here uh placed here by the war department um and by the early battlefield commission and then we also have the real hagerstown pike this will be the axis of advance essentially for the uh first core this is what they're gonna be using to head down towards the dunker church which is behind the camera uh the west woods are directly behind the camera philadelphia brigade park and then you would get down to that dunker church remember we talked on our last video if you watched our last video be sure to go back and check it out we have the union first core moving down in this direction we have confederates off to our right those are john pelham and his guns infillating coming in on the side of the union first core eventually those guns will move from a nicodemus heights down to hauser's ridge just kind of sliding down as the union army moves further south these guns will move down as well so at the same time off to my left we'll start to see uh the union 12th corps arrive 12th corps is going to come in second here as it were in the union order of battle second uh 12th course commanded by joseph mansfield he is one of the oldest generals here on the battlefield he's going to be cutting kind of diagonally across the fields towards where we're standing eventually heading down towards the west woods dunker church in that area which we'll talk about uh in one of our future videos we'll really get into that but he's gonna have his guys in a in a very compact formation uh this compact formation a lot of people give him guff for as well as edwin sumner the second core commander who will lead a division into the west woods in a very compact formation and they say it's very stupid to do this put all your guys into one big column well the thing is these are two of the oldest generals on the battlefield and where are they going to learn this from they're going to learn this from the wars napoleon napoleon made many assaults this way he also is going to deploy his army this way as will the prussians as will all the major european armies mimicking what's going on so as these guys are coming across the field one of the reasons they're going to be in these more compact formations is because that was the easiest way to move through wood lots we talked about in our first video of the east woods we have the west woods and if you're going to be moving through wood lots that's one of the easier ways to move through also you can then deploy into a battle line very easily you can move men to the left to the right you can refront so at first you know it first looks like man this is stupid was it the right decision the end no and we'll talk about that more later but the reason that they're doing this remember we're using antiquated tactics to come across these fields and napoleon will say it himself columns will not break positions artillery will and here in our here at antietam with more than 500 pieces of artillery on the battlefield artillery is going to play a major role on the battlefield something i like to point out as well is antietam was created on what's called the antietam plan uh the antenna plan for this battlefield preservation which the american battlefield trust will do is a counter to what's called the chickamauga plan the sugar battle of chickamauga takes place in 1863 almost a year to the day after antietam but chicken bog is the first national military park created in 1890 and chickamauga what ends up happening there is we want to build this battlefield how are we going to do that we're going to buy as many acres as we can 8 000 acres are initially authorized and eventually about 5 200 acres will be purchased but unfortunately because the government and others are going out to find that hey there's land out here in in georgia and it's pretty cheap let's go buy it and then jack up the prices on the government we have land speculators that show up so by the time antietam comes around they're like no no we're not doing that we're not going out buying this whole battlefield what they'll end up doing are putting in avenues like stark avenue behind us cornfield avenue these other avenues and the park will have this road they'll own maybe 20 feet off the side of it but the rest of this land is always gonna be battlefield so it's never gonna or i'm sorry it's always gonna be farmland so it's never gonna be threatened well progress moves forward and what ends up happening is we have to start preserving these battlefields and that's where the american battlefield trust the safe historic antenna foundation and others come in to start to expand this battlefield if you looked at what it looked like in 1988 versus what it looks like today it's night and day on a land map also i'd like to point out here the the veterans wanted to mark this battlefield one of the things that they're going to do or actually put in like behind we have behind us these iron tablets they're actually produced in chattanooga tennessee and shipped out here at antietam but you'll see iron tablets for every one of the units out here on the battlefield union and confederate written by mostly veterans themselves very informational saying this is what happened here this is who fought here this is where they went some of them have different um have some units have many of these out here because they move around a lot each one of them are numbered so you can actually see the numbered series they're over on the shepherdstown battlefield as well they also put up signs that simply tell you you're at the corn field uh or in this way is the eastwoods or the west woods all of those will be produced out in chattanooga tennessee if you go over to antietam on the web a great website you can read each and every one of those without having to come out to the battlefield though we encourage you to do so and then right beside uh annelise we have a a couple monuments one is the 124th pennsylvania i like to talk about them just for a minute um the 124th pennsylvania is one of what i call these emergency regiments there's the emergency of 1862 when abraham lincoln calls for 300 000 more why does he do this in july and august of 1862 he is going to start to see that the confederates are starting to move up towards washington and eventually they'll start moving up into the heartland offensive into kentucky so we start seeing a lot of different units starting to arrive here within the army of virginia and in the army of potomac when the two emerged and these units are going to largely be brand new guys you can see august 1862 for nine months service now there's a question amongst these new recruits you know that patriotic fervor of 1861 and early 1862 kind of goes out by the wayside so these guys are like hey i don't want to fight the whole time so lincoln kind of comes in for it comes in the middle and says okay we'll have some of these nine month regiments so we'll have units like the 124th the 125th uh with the 130s the 131 3233 these units will start arriving but fight it only battles like antietam fredericksburg and chancellorsville a handful will make it up to gettysburg like the 151st and 153rd pennsylvania but largely in some of the vermonters but largely these units will see their first action here just a few weeks and sometimes a few days after getting their uniforms and their muskets to come out here at at the battle at antietam and finally i know gary has a picture of this um we have a couple of monuments here we have the indiana monument new jersey we have new york we have the 124th and gary has a pretty cool picture to show you how you er you would see the early days here on the battlefield yeah come a little bit this way uh chris before i show you let me keep you in suspense a little bit let me just say first of all you're with the american battlefield trust this is unknown antietam um and i would encourage you to look at our 150 678 uh coverage uh on our facebook and youtube pages to see a lot of the more well-known places like the burnside bridge and you know more of the cornfield and the dunker church uh secondly if you're having trouble with buffering or anything try playing with your resolution some of you more tech savvy people you might be able to click right there on the app and set your resolution a little bit lower and you might have fewer buffering problems this is our way of blaming you for your buffering problems instead of us but check this out annelise now we're standing right at this monument here and you can look across the road and see the tall new jersey memorial over there and check this out when i talk to car enthusiasts tell me this is like they tell me this is roughly 1906. now someone will get on and disagree it's probably you tim york or phil swaggy will get on and tell me though that's not 1906. it's 1908 or something like that but these are some early cars some of the earliest touring cars you'll ever see in photographs from what i understand and you get an idea of what this would have been like i really want to talk about one more battle thing and i think chris wants to come on and do one more thing too so i already mentioned this in the last video this is the hagerstown pike we know that the iron brigade came along the hagerstown pike at some point louisianians under william e stark are going to occupy that fence right over my shoulder over there okay and some of the iron brigade i think the fifth wisconsin maybe is going to pivot toward them and they're engaged in a firefight on either side of the hagerstown pike there but stark's in a good position that is until more of doubleday's troops specifically patrick's brigade is going to move around through this field here or or up into threatening that field so they're going to get onto their flanking behind them and that is why you see the terrible photos you do the five photographs taken along the hagerstown pike and by the way we are standing right there atop that rise so this is you know one of the most famous photos of the civil war there are four other photos showing uh confederate soldiers louisianians all mangled in death um you know and again remember four wounded for every soldier killed so you know the park service has done a great job placing a sign out there on the spot most people don't know there are several different pictures in different orientations and this is the opposite of a good 19th century death so keep that in mind while we're seeing it we do like to see battlefields veterans like to come back they had fun they laughed they cried we can do the same on battlefields today now i think before we finish up chris wants to bring us on to the next phase of the battle not the first core coming around through the cornfield not also through the east woods here with the 12th corps there's a new core coming to town thanks gary so what we have going on here remember this is a living breathing battlefield when people say hey you should make more maps about this or this map doesn't show this unit here remember a map showing just a split second of a battle this is a living breathing unit both of these armies they're always moving around so the first corps will fight out until about until late morning and joe hooker is going to be wounded in the foot and that's really going to knock the first core out of action not to mention the fact they've seen a heck of a lot of action along the hagerstown pike down through here but hooker's gonna be pulled out his second in command george gordon mead he will take over mead will eventually take over the army of the potomac on june 28 1863 of joe hooker in the midst of the gettysburg campaign so these two have a long history together uh we also had the 12th quarter as gary mentioned we'll talk more about those guys when we go into the west woods and we'll have a special guest for you there but the 12th course come up they've lost the head of the snake as it were joseph mansfield he is going to be mortally wounded out here and it's wealth core for a little while is going to be essentially listless but remember we're still going to try to drive towards that white church the dunker church which is on the other side of the west woods behind where i'm standing bunker church is there believe me now the second core is going to come up online and i mentioned our last video george mcclellan seems to do his his best to stay away from edwin sumner the second core commander and to keep him out of trouble you look at that at the peninsula campaign he's trying to keep him out of here man the worst thing that could happen in mcclellan's eyes is mcclellan getting wounded and this guy having to take over well sumner i talked a little bit about earlier he is going to start moving his second core is gigantic second quarter across the fields behind us he's going to start aiming towards the west woods but he only brings one division the division of john sedgwick the 49 year old cornwall hollow native of connecticut he rides a horse named cornwall as he comes out on the battlefield and is wounded three separate times knocked out of action eventually as he's known uncle john will come back to the war and command the union sixth army corps he liked to play solitaire a lot and some of his staff officers were essentially in love with the man if you read the way they they describe him and some of his other staff officers they describe them as romeo but sedgwick comes out here on the battlefield his men will march into those west woods across the piece of land that we call today the epicenter a piece of land here at antietam that members the american battlefield trust helped to preserve it was a core piece of the battlefield land here to connect the cornfield the west woods the dunker church the east woods you can now go across the epicenter and really access a lot of the action here the rest of the second core though will start to break off and it will start to head towards a place called today the sunken road or the bloody lane uh and those will be the divisions of israel richardson and william french nicknamed blinky because he has this weird habit of winking and blinking his eyes whenever he goes into combat he's also known as old rum barrel think about that so they are going to head off into that direction but now we have these new uh actions starting to to materialize some of the 12 cores coming across behind us the second core is coming into action some into the west woods some towards the sunken road so there's a lot of things that are going to be happening and coming to a head here in our next few videos good thanks so much chris and we know some of you uh are watching this later because i think we got cut off again but um uh to to chris and uh to brian and to uh i'm sorry to kevin and everybody behind the camera thank you so much uh make sure you're checking out our old videos at this time check these videos out later after they've fully loaded up and we might try on facebook next to see how we're doing thank you for watching thank you for supporting battlefield preservation get inspired at battlefields.org you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 16,385

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, unknown antietam, unknown civil war, 159th anniversary of antietam, antietam video tour, antietam battlefield tour

Id: Vhj3VX1jjuE

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021