Headquarters, Army Of The Potomac,
Friday Evening, Sept.
19.
My Dear Mr. Forbes,
— I have just received your letter of 13th. We had a severe fight here on
Tuesday, and a battle on Wednesday in which the loss among our officers was
very serious.
I have had my usual good luck, but shall have to buy a new
sabre and shall have one horse the less to ride for a month or two. Young Bob
was in the fight of Tuesday and the afternoon of Wednesday, but was untouched.1
Our victory was a complete one, but only decisive in so far as it
clears Maryland. Had Harper's Ferry not been yielded, this battle would not
have been fought, — Jackson and A. P. Hill marched on Tuesday from Harper's
Ferry, and reinforced Lee, Longstreet, and D. H. Hill. On Wednesday morning we
had their whole army in front of us — about 80,000 on our side and not less
than 100,000 on theirs;2 we took the positions we attempted and in
most cases held them; the enemy at no point occupied the field of battle at
dark, though, in the neutral ground between the lines, the dead and wounded of
both sides at some points lay mingled. During Thursday we received
reinforcements of fifteen or twenty thousand men, and should have renewed the
fight to-day, had not the enemy withdrawn. They commenced moving away about 9 P.
M. and by daybreak none but stragglers and wounded were on this side the
Potomac. Remember that McClellan started from Washington with a demoralized
army, and I think you will admit that the campaign has been very creditable to
him.
_______________
1 “Young
Bob," also mentioned in the letter from Harrison's Landing, was a vigorous
young horse, raised by Mr. Forbes at Naushon, and given by him to Lowell.
This is the story of the day from the orderly's point of
view: “At the battle of Antietam, the Captain was carrying orders from General
McClellan to every Corps Commander. He went with some orders to General Hooker
on the right: when we got there, the men were coming back in disorder, and the
Captain went in and helped rally them, and a solid shot struck his scabbard and
shivered it to pieces. He told me, before he got back to Headquarters, that
Berold [a handsome, tall sorrel] was giving out, — he could only trot, — and he
told me to take the saddle and put it on Bob. When I took the saddle off
Berold, there was two great lumps on each side of him as big as a hen's egg. He
had been shot. I kept the Captain's scabbard a long time, and, when we started
for Boston, he took the sabre and would not let me keep the scabbard, but told
me to throw it away. I wanted him to keep his overcoat that he got shot full of
holes, but he said No, and gave it to a coloured man after the battle of
Antietam.”
2 Lowell evidently gives the figures
as then estimated by his General, whose foible was, as Lowell later
appreciated, the over-estimating of the enemy's strength. As a matter of fact,
now conceded, Lee had the smaller army. General Palfrey, who endeavours judicially
to sift the varying statements on both sides, calls attention to the fact that,
of the 87,000 troops which General McClellan reports that he had at the battle,
two corps and the cavalry hardly had any share, thus reducing the force to less
than 60,000; and adds: “If any allowance be made for the notorious difference
between morning report, totals, and effectives in action, it will appear that
the Federals engaged cannot have outnumbered the Confederates in more than the
proportion of three to two, and probably did not outnumber them so much. This
is by no means large odds when the attacking force has to deal with a force
occupying a strong defensive position, as the Confederates confessedly did, and
one where the ground was admirably adapted for the safe and secret and rapid
transfer of their troops from a less pressed to a more pressed portion of their
line.”
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 225-6, 411-2
No comments:
Post a Comment