THE CHARGE ACROSS THE BURNSIDE BRIDGE.
us, receiving their fire, losing large numhers of our men, we charged over the fence, dislodging them and driving them from their positions down the hill toward the village, a stand of regimental colors belonging to a South Carolina regiment being taken by Private Thomas Hare, Company 1), 89th New York Volunteers, who was afterward killed. We continued to pursue the enemy down the hill. Discovering that they were massing fresh troops on our left, I went back and requested General Rodman to bring up rapidly the Second Brigade to our support, which he did, they engaging the enemy, he soon afterward falling badly wounded. . . . The large force advancing on our left flank compelled us to retire from the position, which we could have held had we been properly supported.”
everything was at its darkest and stealthiest one of the 103d stumbled over the regimental dog, and in trying to avoid treading on it, staggered against a stack of muskets and knocked them over. The giving way of the two or three men upon whom they fell was communicated to others in a sort of wave movement of constantly increasing magnitude, reinforced by the ever-present apprehension of attack, till two regiments were in confusion. In a few seconds order was restored, and we went on to our place in the line — a field of thin corn sloping toward the ereek, where we sat down on the plowed ground and watched for a while the dull glare on the sky of the Confederate campfires behind the hills. We were hungry, of course, but, as no fires were allowed, we could only mix our ground coffee and sugar in our hands and eat them dry. I think we were the more easily inclined to this crude disposal of our rations from a feeling that for many of us the need of drawing them would cease forever with the following day.
All through the evening the shifting and placing had gone on, the moving masses being dimly described in the strange half lights of earth and sky. There was something weirdly impressive yet unreal in the gradual drawing together of those whispering armies under cover of the night — something of
In this attack Willcox’s division (the right of the line) charged into the village. Colonel Fairchild, commanding a brigade in Rodman’s division, on the left of the line (which included Hawkins’s Zouaves, seen at the stone wall in the picture), describes as follows in his report the advance upon Sliarpsburg after the hill above the bridge had been gained: “We continued to advance to the opposite hill under a tremendous fire from the enemy’s batteries, up steep embankments. Arriving near a stone fence, the enemy —a brigade composed of South Carolina and Georgia regiments — opened on us with musketry. After returning their fire I immediately ordered a charge, which the whole brigade gallantly responded to, moving with alacrity and steadiness. Arriving at the fence,behind which the enemy were awaiting
The next morning, receiving no orders to march, we set to work collecting the arms and equipments scattered about the field, and burying the dead. The weather being fine, bowers were built in the woods — generally in fence corners — for such of the wounded as could not be moved with safety; others, after stimulants had been given, were helped down the mountain to the rude hospitals. Before we left the spot, some of the country people living thereabout, who had been scared away by the firing, ventured back, making big eyes at all they saw, and asking most ridiculous questions. One was, whether we were from Mexico! Those belated echoes, it seemed, were still sounding in the woods of Maryland.
At Antietam our corps — the Ninth, under Burnside — was on the extreme left, opposite the stone bridge. Our brigade stole into position about halfpast 10 o’clock on the night of the 16th. No lights were permitted, and all conversation was carried on in whispers. As the regiment was moving past the 103d New York to get to its place, there occurred, on a small scale and without serious results, one of those unaccountable panics often noticed in crowds, by which each man, however brave individually, merges his individuality for the moment, and surrenders to an utterly causeless fear. When 151
land and Sixth New Hampshire] which had made the effort before them, rushed at a double-quick over the slope leading to the bridge and over the bridge itself, with an impetuosity which the enemy could not resist; and the Stars and Stripes were planted on the opposite bank at 1 o’clock P. M., amid the most enthusiastic cheering from every part of the field from where they could be seen.”
in position, waiting. How a trivial thing will often thrust itself upon the attention in a supreme moment was well exemplified here. All about us grew pennyroyal, bruised by the tramping of a hundred feet, and the smell of it has always been associated in my memory with that battle.
Before the sunlight faded, I walked over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead— undersized men mostly, from the coast district of North Carolina, with sallow, hatchet faces, and clad in “butternut” — a color running all the way from a deep coffee-brown up to the whitish-brown of ordinary dust. As I looked down on the poor, pinched faces, worn with marching and scant fare, all enmity died out. There was no “secession” in those rigid forms, nor in those fixed eyes staring blankly at the sky. Clearly it was not “their war.” Some of our men primed their muskets afresh with the finer powder from the cartridge-boxes of the dead. With this exception, each remained untouched as he had fallen. Darkness came on rapidly, and it grew very chilly. As little could be done at that hour in the way of burial, we unrolled the blankets of the dead, spread them over the bodies, and then sat down in line, munching a little on our cooked rations in lieu of supper, and listening to the firing, which was kept up on the right, persistently. By 9 o’clock this ceased entirely. Drawing our blankets over us, we went to sleep, lying upon our arms in line as we had stood, living Yankee and dead Confederate side by side, and indistinguishable. This was Sunday.
In bis report General Sturgis describes as follows the charge across the bridge: “Orders arrived from General Burnside to carry the bridge at all hazards. I then selected the Fifty, first New York and the Fifty-first Pennsylvania from the Second Brigade, and directed them to charge with the bayonet. They started on their mission of death full of enthusiasm, and, taking a routeless exposed than the regiments [Second Mary-
afoot, and the next moment the Confederates burst out of the woods, and made a dash at the battery. We had just obeyed a hastily given order to lie down, when the bullets whistled over our heads, and fell far down the slope behind us. Then the guns opened at short range, full-shotted with grape and canister. The force of the charge was easily broken, for though it was vigorously made it was not sustained—perhaps was not intended to be, as the whole day’s battle had been merely an effort of the enemy to cheek our advance till he could concentrate for a general engagement. As the Confederates came out of the woods their line touched ours on the extreme left only, and there at an acute angle, their men nearly treading on those of the 89th, who were on their faces in the cornfield, beforethey discoveredthem. At that instant the situation just there was ideally, cruelly advantageous to us. The Confederates stood before us not twenty feet away, the full intention of destruction on their faces — but helpless, with empty muskets. The 89th simply rose up and shot them down.
It was in this charge that I first heard the “ rebel yell ״; not the deep-breasted Northern cheer, given in unison and after a struggle, to signify an advantage gained, but a high shrill yelp, uttered without concert, and kept up continually when the fighting was approaching a climax, as an incentive to further effort. This charge ended the contest for the day on that part of the line. Pickets were set well forward in the woods, and we remained some time