The Final Attack at Antietam: Unknown Antietam 159

hey everybody welcome and thank you for joining us another obscure antietam place at least you know people places people don't get out let alone walk out into and maybe we'll get into that a little bit later you're with the american battlefield trust that's chris white behind the camera there we've got some other special guests we're adding another guest that we haven't had on it just the dominoes keep falling in a good way indeed with us we have more than a century and a half of people studying the battle of antietam so we got some real deal people with us today and we are on the scene of the final attack what's often called that let me back up for a second september 17 1862 i think you know there's fighting in the cornfield there's fighting in the west woods there's fighting around the sunken road most people don't know there's fighting around the middle bridge but around mid-morning uh union forces start to try to assault the burnside bridge at ten o'clock at noon and at one o'clock and around one o'clock after all or most of all the other fighting has died down you finally have the union soldiers burnside soldiers getting across snavely's ford and burnside bridge and that's when the real fighting starts around here that's the real message of this is that what's about to ensue is a battle as costly almost as the first battle of bull run as the battle of kennesaw mountain just on this part of the battlefield and this is after the fighting for uh burnside bridge so this is some real deal fighting to set it up here burnside has a few divisions with him he actually has four but i think he only has three with him at this time and they are going to array in this orientation more than a mile from here pick its charge size as i've heard tom clemons say and they've got a mile wide line and they are going to do the final advance they're going to cut the confederates off from their routes of retreat pin them against the potomac win the battle of antietam heartily and who knows what comes next no because i think there's a little bit more to this story you've probably heard about and to set this up our good friend and uh co-founder of the american battlefield trust predecessor and with the save historic antietam foundation dennis frye hey gary hey everybody it's great to be with you again here at antietam um we panned in a direction that is now looking south so let me give you a quick orientation here you see a mountain in the background that mountain many of you know but you don't know it by name it's referred to as elk ridge and if you've been at harpers ferry and you're harper's fairing you're overlooking the potomac river and you see that massive mountain with the mammoth cliffs that just just have themselves completely managing that harpers ferry landscape that's called maryland heights that's the mountain that you see in the background that terminates at harpers ferry at maryland heights the elk ridge so why do i make a reference to harpers ferry well because it's not far from here it's very near here in fact we are closer to harpers ferry here than anyplace else on the battlefield so harper's ferry's south of us not far again why my emphasis on harper's ferry when we're standing here on september 17th at antietam well remember two out of every three confederates two-thirds of lee's army is not here with him they have been with jackson stonewall jackson at harpers ferry executing special orders 191 resulting in the capitulation of harper's ferry so it finally surrenders on september 15th two days ago what that surrender does is it releases those confederates under jackson and allows them to come north so on the 16th confederates have been marching from south to north crossing the potomac river only a few miles from here near shepherdstown thousands thousands and thousands of confederates coming north here we are now afternoon of the 17th lee has deployed all the confederates that have arrived they're here they have fought and generally right now at this moment on this section of the field which would be his right the confederate right is facing desperation almost hopelessness he's run out of men that's the greatest the greatest fear of a general you don't have enough resources to get the job done and that's general lee right now he has run out of men to stop this advance that gary just points out burnside now preparing to attack the confederate right and lee doesn't have enough men to hold this position so general lee is looking the same direction that i'm pointing right now he's looking south he's looking towards harper's ferry because he knows there's still one final division that hasn't arrived on the field at full strength almost 6 000 men not going to be near that when it arrives here coming from harpers ferry that long march hard march and crossing the river much of it at a double quick on a day that was dry and not real hot but humid is going to take its toll and so perhaps general ambrose powell hill ap hill that final division that has been in harpers ferry on its way leaving about 7 30 this morning september 17th 7 30 this morning it's now about 2 30 3 o'clock they're going to be huffing and puffing they're going to be soaked with with sweat and covered with dust and you now are expected to fight your day's just beginning after that long march believe me you and me after that long march regardless of our physical condition we would say you want us to do what you want us to fight after we got here well now comes the hard part and now comes the hardest work and it's work that's so important that literally and i'm not using hyperbole the fate of the army in northern virginia right here at this place at this moment is in the hands of the arrival timely arrival of general a.p hill and lee knows it if if hill doesn't make it in time and burnside advances before hill's arrival we can't possibly hold sharksburg and it could be disaster for the confederate army well they're coming they're coming from that direction they're getting closer and closer lee knows it and to tell you about what happens next i turn it over to co-founder of the save historic antietam foundation and my dear friend tom clements thank you dennis and certainly this has got to be one of the most dramatic moments of september 17 1862 as dennis has set it up the ninth core attack is numerically probably the largest single attack the entire day of september 17 1862. burnside's four divisions his two leading divisions side by side with rodman's division on the left and wilcox's division on the right are from essentially the other side of the ravine almost to the boonsboro pike down to this monument right here as dennis said a mile wide front of union advance supported by cox's ohio brigades behind them this is a huge assault what's here to stop them three tiny little brigades from david r jones's division uh kempers virginians jenkins south carolina and what's left of tombs brigade which were georgians who had defended the bridge and have regrouped now to come back and oppose this attack that's not many troops maybe 2 000 at tops to defend against 10 000 men marching we need hill can he'll get here in time that's the big question two things happen that are going to dramatically affect the outcome of this first of all ap hill rides ahead of his division to report to lee at lee's headquarters west of town about three quarters of a mile diagonally in that direction just west of the town of sharpsburg lee tells hill that he's going to want to move his troops to this part of the battlefield that burnside's attack is building he can see the troops see the troops moving in in position and clearly burnside is going to launch an assault but after talking with lee ap hill runs into david r jones now every confederate troop that had crossed sn the shepherdstown ford up to this point had turned north upstream on the potomac to the boonesboro turnpike and then come into the back of sharpsburg but david r jones tells hill push straight from the forward and you'll come right into the back of my position a much shorter route this is going to save the day the other big thing is that burnside's command is going to have some difficulties keeping alignment we're standing here in about the left end of burnside's attack the right end is much farther advanced towards sharpsburg all the way up on the top of the hill almost to the harpers ferry road but the left flank is lagging and the monument over my shoulder here that you can see in the background is to one of those lagging regiments this is the 16th connecticut infantry they were mustered into the federal service on august 28th of 1862 got on a train and went to washington where they were issued arms and equipment and marched out with the ninth corps to this place without ever having time to do any sort of drilling or learning how to be a soldier they may have fired their muskets once before this battle and so now the 8th connecticut which should have been on their right flank is about 400 yards up the hill in front of them the 16th connecticut is laying down in the middle of a field that field there was a cornfield 40 acres and you look at that terrain and i've got to tell you i admire a man that looks at a ground that slanted and says i want to plow this with a horse-drawn plow and put 40 acres of corn in there that's pretty incredible in itself but these rookie soldiers are laying in that corn bullets sipping through the corn over their heads no idea what to do general rodman the division commander saw them lagging back started to ride down here to bring them forward when he was mortally wounded and removed from the battlefield and so these guys are on their own and wondering what their next move is but they don't wonder very long because the next move is made for them ap hill arrives he arrives at the nick of time uh he takes his first brigade maxi greg's south carolinians and they come down a ravine over here to the south out of sight and then turn and start marching northward and get practically perpendicular to the 16th connecticut now some of ap hills men may have helped themselves to some blue jackets while they were at harpers ferry for several days but i think more important is that greg's south carolinians are coming into the 16th connecticut's position from exactly this way the 16th connecticut got there so these rookie soldiers look out and think oh this is more of our own men coming up and it's not until greg stops his column about 75 yards from the flank of the 16th connecticut and unleashes a volley that they realize that they're mistaken and those that didn't fall down pretty much break for the rear the colonel of the 16th was a u.s army regular he knew what to do he gives the command change front forward on the 10th company he's going to wheel this regiment around to face this flanking fire the 10th company wheeling on a fixed pivot the other nine companies moving parallel on a moving pivot to line themselves up he knows what to do the problem is nobody in the 16th has heard that order before or has any idea how to execute it even on a drill field to say nothing of in a cornfield under fire so you really have to sympathize with these poor rookie nutmegger soldiers from connecticut who just break and run because they don't know what else to do they can stand there and get shot down and killed and in fact we have been able to document the two of these fellows from connecticut didn't stop running until they got to england they literally went to baltimore got on a ship and went to england and said three weeks in the army and i am done so this was essentially a huge turning point with hill coming in on the flank not only the 16th connecticut but essentially the next brigade comes in under dorsey pender excuse me under lawrence o'brien branch takes the 7th and 37th north carolina lines them up again perpendicular to the union line of advance and is pushing them that way and that means that every other regiment in this advance now has confederates on their flank and rear and they're going to have to fall back so ap hill has arrived with maybe 3 500 guys out of his division to confront 10 000 guys who are fighting probably about 1800 but hill has arrived exactly on time and exactly at the place where he is getting maximum benefit from these soldiers being on the flank and rear and this brings burnside's advance to a stall and they fall back all the way to this ridge over here on the other side of the cornfield where eventually the two lines will stabilize the union soldiers over there along the uh sheriff fence uh and the confederates essentially in this area and uh just behind us if we turn around this way you can see in the immediate rear this is the what we call mortuary cannon that marks where general branch of north carolina was killed and of course the ground that these north carolinians traversed and so this is pretty much the ending of the battle of antietam that by the time these two lines stabilize the union fall back and regroup the confederates come down here and occupy roughly this fence line there was no road here in 1862 this is a park avenue to get you here by that point it's getting near dusk and the fighting is done for the day so this is the climactic ending of a battle that has had nothing but a series of climactic back and forth since dawn about 5 30 in the morning that's great tom what a beautiful story and you know you can't write it any better than this i mean you know all these people making up a lot of history you don't need to it's already written for you uh if only you'll take the time to look at it beautifully told tom um you're with the american battlefield trust we hope you'll not only share this with your friends but you also go ahead and subscribe to this youtube channel and follow us on facebook as well we could really use we're trying to spread as much history as possible and if you're watching you probably like it you probably have friends that do as well now um i do we got a couple more things we want to talk about one of which is right behind me and an opportunity that might be coming up but before we do that i know our good friend brian cheeseboro had a question for dennis i think thanks gary i'm back for my trip um anyway we're here on branch avenue and i was just looking out on this gorgeous day and i recall being here uh 20 years ago i even brought my photo album to share some pictures with the crew here today uh anyway um i remember coming up this road and seeing the monuments and such and then when i get up here to the 16th connecticut monument which is just behind uh the cameraman here uh looking at it and remembering that i made a point to get to all of the monuments on my trip this is 20 years ago but that one being in the field right there i was really not able to access it now i understand i guess since then that there have been some paths of whatever that have been created but i know that the uh safe historic antenna foundation foundation has been behind cutting some pathways to make greater access to the battlefield and i really think that that's wonderful so my question is um i wasn't able to access that years ago but i wanted to ask dennis fry if anything is going to be done to give greater access to that 16th connecticut monument great story by the way uh tom talley dennis if you can come on and we can talk for a minute let's go back so as you look out here over the 40-acre corn field and you see the 16th connecticut in the background um brian's right there's there's no access you got a soybean field here oh incidentally during the civil war no farmer was growing soybeans in the antietam valley this is a cash crop today but soybeans no we would have corn here so how do we get to it this really deals with the evolution of the antietam battlefield when you were here 20 years ago this was private property the park service eventually was able to acquire these properties there were easements on this land there were protective easements on the land so the land couldn't be developed but an easement does not get you access it's still private property it's not owned by the public the public has simply purchased the development rights on that land and so eventually the farmer retires and the farmer sells and the farmer can sell to anyone but the park service the national park service acquires this property and boy that's a big acquisition because this is a huge hole here at antietam where we don't have the opportunity to have public access and see this ground walk this ground and feel this ground and so when you were here you didn't have that opportunity today you can park at the burnside bridge you can walk trails that take you all through burn sides of salt and it's incomplete however it's incomplete because as we turn around go back this way here on the other side of branch avenue all of that also soybean field today that's private property now it's protected with the exception of a few of the houses you see up there on the rise the top of the hill which is where the harpers ferry road is located that's the confederate position in this battle much of the day background is protected it's under easement nobody can develop it but you can't walk on it it's not accessible private property so i know another future target for the national park service is this ground so that we can complete this section of the battlefield which would permit you to walk through many of these fields um i might add also that there's no parking at this end of the field but we're working to change that and i'll turn that over to my friend tom clemons to talk about a little teaser for you a little teaser on what we might be able to do here just a little bit just to see what it's like thank you gary and dennis yes save historic antietam foundation is very excited about an opportunity that came up this summer and we've been able to take advantage of it if you look over my shoulder you can see a one-story house up on the crest of the hill there on the other side of the harpers ferry road the park service authorized boundary ends at harpers ferry road so that property on the other side is not and could never be part of the national park without a boundary expansion but it's a very important ground there were confederate troops there in fact right where you see that house was where richardson's second company of the washington artillery of new orleans occupied their last position of the day and right in front of them colonel james lane of the 28th north carolina had his troops in the road in front of the guns laying down supporting the battery to keep it from being attacked and so it is very much a part of the battle it's not part of the battlefield but that house came up for sale this summer and we wanted to move quickly we have been uh essentially burned a couple times by not moving fast enough and so we quickly jumped on the house and put it under contract and then we called our good friends at the american battlefield trust to help us out with this but essentially uh we now have that half acre proper property up there uh now in our possession we've settled on it and to the left of that house uh you can see just a little bit of another structure next to it on a separate half-acre property that would be to the right for the viewer sorry yeah you're right uh to uh your right my left uh there is an uh abandoned house trailer up there that's a separate lot and we have purchased uh that property as well so we have them both now essentially uh under contract and all we have to do is pay for it of course but we're real excited about the possibilities that might happen with that property it overlooks this whole final attack field and would be a wonderful place to interpret from right now we're pulled over on the grass shoulder of the tour road and if you notice any of the park service law enforcement guys going by they're giving us the hairy eyeball because they don't like us pulling over on the grass but this is the only place that you can get this view so bringing that half acre or those two half acre lots together and bringing it into the park service would allow another tour stop to really tell you this story about the final attack because there is no other place here on the battlefield tour route to tell this story you either have to stop here in the middle of the pavement impede traffic or pull over on the grass there's no interpretive signs if you don't know what you're looking at you don't know what happened here we want to change that and we see this property up here as the potential for telling a much more accurate story about this climactic end to this climactic battle and tom said the word accurate and that's what i want to make my final point you see those houses up there they're not part of the historic scene they weren't here on september 17 1862 they're incongruous with this landscape their intrusions in the landscape and so sometimes the best thing that we can do on a battlefield is remove things that have grown up on the battlefield that weren't there have no history no integral part of the story and so those structures that you see with your naked eye right now that one house and that trailer beside it when you come back to antietam in the future you won't see it because save a storage antenna foundation is going to demolish those structures restore the landscape there and open this up as soldiers would have seen it and sometimes battlefield restoration is just as powerful as battlefield preservation great dennis i think we're going to probably wrap it up here but i mean you've heard david duncan already say it a million times you know this idea of battlefield preservation good intentions are just that money money the only way to protect pieces of battlefield land is to buy it or to buy interest in it and that's it and you've heard tom and dennis say that before as well so to get it that final bit we're gonna you're gonna probably see a separate video just about that i think we gave you a little bit more than a taste today but there's even a little bit more we'll show you the land in better detail and hopefully you'll be uh convinced to get involved um this is a key part of the story we're really you know hoping that you'll become part of this sort of puzzle piece i mean the cornfield and the approach to the sunken road weren't even preserved 35 years ago i mean this battlefield has mostly been preserved like to do to people like you and and the group around me right now in the last three and a half decades so we hope you'll continue to be part of that we appreciate you watching we have more videos to show you thanks for watching and thank you for supporting battlefield preservation and education you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 17,806

Rating: 4.953186 out of 5

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

Id: JmQZdobdVYY

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021