The nation’s bloodiest day
George B. McClellan was ecstatic. The commanding general of the
Army of the Potomac had in his hands a document never intended for
his eyes, a dispatch from General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy
to a number of his generals directing their route and assignments
for the invasion of Maryland.
An Indiana private found it wrapped around three cigars in an
area recently abandoned by the Confederates. Special Order 191 had
been passed up the line to McClellan himself.
The nation’s bloodiest day
George B. McClellan was ecstatic. The commanding general of the Army of the Potomac had in his hands a document never intended for his eyes, a dispatch from General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy to a number of his generals directing their route and assignments for the invasion of Maryland.
An Indiana private found it wrapped around three cigars in an area recently abandoned by the Confederates. Special Order 191 had been passed up the line to McClellan himself.
It had a greater personal significance for him. He had organized the Army of the Potomac at the outset of the war but his extreme caution in moving on the enemy had resulted in his removal as general-in-chief. “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home,” he said.
McClellan entered West Point at 15 and graduated second in his class in 1846. He had served honorably in the Mexican War and was an observer in the Crimean War. But he often argued with superiors and sometimes refused to carry out orders. The previous year he even declined to see President Abraham Lincoln, sending word down from his hotel room that “the general has retired for the night.”
Lee had boldly gambled that his invasion of Maryland would persuade many Confederate sympathizers of the state to force its secession to the Southern cause, and that the governments of Great Britain and France would officially recognize the Confederacy.
Rather than taking immediate action to send a force to defeat General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson at Harper’s Ferry, McClellan waited 18 hours, until he was satisfied his troops were ready for combat, before acting.
The fighting converged around Sharpsburg, what the South calls the battle, although the North named it after the nearby creek – Antietam. It began at dawn on Sept. 17, 1862 and lasted until nightfall. In those 12 hours, Union deaths numbered 2,108 with 9,540 wounded. The South suffered 1,546 killed and 7,752 wounded. Each side captured hundreds of men.
With 87,000 soldiers against Lee’s 45,000, McClellan failed to send enough men in at any time to win a victory, and Lee met each separate charge by rapid maneuvering. A third of the Union forces were never committed.
Lee began his retreat across the Potomac the next day but McClellan failed to pursue him, thus enabling Lee to save his army. Despite frequent messages from the War Department and Lincoln himself, McClellan did not follow Lee until Oct. 26, far too late.
He was removed from command again but Antietam gave Lincoln an opportunity to deliver the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in the Confederacy were to be freed, and dampened foreign recognition of the South.
Sept. 17, 1862 remains the bloodiest day of combat in American history. Not even D-Day more than 80 years later or the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 tallied as many American deaths or injuries.
