Original subtitles

In the summer of 1861, while both the North and South were engaged in raising

and training the vast armies that would soon be locked in battle from Tennessee

to the eastern seaboard, the United States Navy began to undertake

operations in support of the Anaconda Plan.

The first priority for the Blue Water Navy was to seal off the South's major

ports, thus beginning the famed blockade that would have such a disastrous effect

on the Southern economy.

But as with every blockade, this one had leaks.

On August 27, 1861, the Union forces seized a key point in North Carolina

at Cape Hatteras.

A few months later, another base was seized at Port Royal, which connected

Savannah and Charleston via a series of inland waterways.

While the Blue Water Navy worked on strangling the south from the sea, in

the west, a brown water flotilla helped secure one of the Union's first

significant victories of the war.

The network of waterways that crisscrossed the western theater was of

vital importance in the strategic planning of both the north and south.

The rivers out west ran north-south, and the Confederates had a very difficult

time trying to defend Tennessee.

and the Mississippi Valley because these rivers all really helped northern

advances because the gunboats and transports could go straight down into

Confederate territory, and this would help advances and offensives very much.

Fort Donelson and Fort Henry were both built along the rivers that go into

Tennessee, in western Tennessee, to try and stop this, to arrest that movement,

or at least contest it. And when Ulysses Grant... did his first campaign out of

Illinois into Tennessee, he was able to seize both of these, Henry very easily

and Donaldson after a campaign in siege that eliminated the main Confederate

defense on those rivers.

And this, of course, and the action at Donaldson in particular, gave Grant his

first national prominence where he earned the nickname Unconditional

Surrender because those were the terms that he gave the Confederates at Fort

Donaldson.

While the capture of Forts Henry and Donaldson were important achievements in

their own right, the strategic effect their loss had on the Confederacy proved

to be enormous.

Once that defense was gone, the rivers were wide open, the Confederates had to

abandon Nashville and were forced way back into northern Mississippi.

Grant planned to exploit the opening provided by the surrender of the two

forts.

Quickly, he moved down the Tennessee River to Pittsburgh Landing, where he

intended to stage his army in preparation for an attack on the rail

center at Corinth, Mississippi.

The Confederates, however, were not about to let such a dangerous move go

unopposed. The local commander, General Albert Sidney Johnston, responded to the

threat by gathering his forces for a counteroffensive.

Johnston, long considered one of the great minds in the pre-war army,

determined that if he could strike at Grant at Pittsburgh Landing before

General Buell's army could link up with him, he could defeat the Union forces in

detail. With 45,000 men at his disposal, Johnston moved against Grant in April of

1862. After a 35-mile march, Johnston's men reached their assigned positions by

the evening of April 5th.

Most of his men were green volunteers, eager for battle, but unskilled in the

ways of war.

Incredibly, the Federal High Command had no idea that a major attack was

imminent. When a nervous colonel tried to warn William Tecumseh Sherman, a

division commander of suspicious enemy movements, Sherman glared at him.

Take your damn regiment back to Ohio, Sherman snarled.

There is no enemy nearer than Corinth.

The real story at Shiloh is the total failure of Union reconnaissance and

security efforts.

The morning of the 5th of April, there are 40,000 Confederate troops two miles

away from the Union Army, and they have no idea that they are there.

It was a most beautiful morning.

The boys were scattered around camp.

polishing and brightening their muskets, and brushing up and cleaning their

shoes, jackets, and trousers.

Private Leander Stilwell, 100th Indiana.

Shortly before 6 a.m. Sunday morning, the Confederates came booming out of the

woods.

Thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack, the Union forces reeled and fell

back. The Confederates had achieved surprise, yet complete success would

prove elusive due to a flawed plan of battle.

Johnston's III Corps, led by Hardy, Bragg, and Polk, would strike at the

Union camps, while Breckinridge's Reserve Corps would move toward

Pittsburgh Landing to cut off the Yankee line of escape.

Though simple in design, the plan failed to take advantage of the Confederates'

numerical superiority.

Confederate formation took advantage of massing their forces on this front where

the main attack was taking place.

But their formation failed to take into account the terrain that they were going

to be moving through, which would cause confusion and break up their line

formation. This also didn't allow for flexibility on the part of the

Confederates to react to opportunities that were presented to them.

The rebel drive had barely begun before it ran into trouble.

a federal officer named everett peabody had detached several companies from his

brigade to patrol the woods around his union encampment and these men ran smack

into johnston's first attacking wave of troops the countryside around pittsburgh

landing was a tangled mess of lush forest streams and rolling swales and

soon units lost contact with their neighbors while others became hopelessly

intermingled Friendly fire incidents were frightfully common. The fire

opened. A ripping, roaring boom-bang.

The air was full of balls and deadly missiles.

The litter core was carrying off the dead and wounded.

Private Sam Watkins, Company H, First Tennessee.

Peabody's men could not hope to hold against the Confederate onslaught and

beat a hasty retreat while news of the onrushing rebels was sent back via

runners. As the weight of the attack bore down on the Union line, the

enormity of the Confederate threat began to reveal itself as in the distance an

endless stream of gray and butternut clad soldiers emerged from the woods.

The enemy's camps lay before us, spreading far and wide.

Never shall I forget the grandeur of that sight.

Then came the order, thrilling every heart.

By the left of companies, forward, into line.

Double quick, march.

No order was ever more handsomely executed.

Each company filed into line as deliberately as if that long line of

sullen blue that lay scarcely 300 yards in front was a line of friends instead

of foes.

Our line moved forward.

until within 100 paces of the line of blue.

And then we were lost in a blaze of thunder and frenzy of battle.

B.F. Sawyer, Glides Mississippi Regiment.

The weight of this initial assault fell near the Union Center on the

inexperienced troops of General Benjamin Prentiss, a political appointee with no

previous military experience.

Thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack, the Federals staggered back.

Yet Prentice and his men would play a pivotal role in the day's events.

Over on Prentice's right, Sherman, too, had been taken by surprise.

Sherman reacted quickly to this surprise, and he organized his troops

around Shiloh Church, which is how the battle got its name in the North.

But in contrast to what Sherman was doing, forming an effective defense, the

rest of the battlefield at this point really looks like a checkerboard, where

you have small pockets of Union troops fighting in an isolated situation

amongst the trees and the swales, and fighting stubbornly, whereas other units

had completely given way, and so the Confederates were flowing around them.

As the Confederates pressed their attack, the Union troops struggled to

hold on.

By now, Grant had reached the scene and was trying to determine what had

happened and just how bad the damage was.

As the Battle of Shiloh opens, Grant is at his headquarters waiting for Buell.

As the cannonade opens and he's alerted to this Confederate attack, he moves

rapidly down to see what's going on, and along the way he stops and alerts

Wallace's division to move towards the battle as well.

The fury of the Confederate attack carried all before it, and soon the

Union camps had been overrun.

There, the rebels found Yankee breakfast still cooking, and many broke ranks to

feast on the captured food and loot the camps.

But the pause cost the Confederates critical time, and when at last the

attack resumed, the Union lines had reorganized.

Worse for Johnston, his men were only managing to push the Union troops back

toward Pittsburgh Landing, not away from it as intended.

He thus shifted pressure from the left and center to his right, where already a

pocket of Federal resistance was beginning to gather.

While executing a fighting withdrawal during the morning of the battle,

General Prentiss came across a sunken road and a peach orchard. And he

immediately recognized these as very valuable defensive positions, so he

deployed his division into it. And his position here becomes the hard shoulder

of resistance for the Union center, and also becomes known in history as the

Hornet's Nest.

By about noon, the Confederates had become hopelessly intermingled.

Bragg assessed the situation and simply had Hardy take command of the left, poke

the center, while he would direct the action on the right.

One of his first orders was to send a fresh brigade toward the sunken road.

Forward his men went, only to be chopped down by withering volleys of rifle fire.

Many balls cracked and whizzed across the gentle open field in front of the

sunken road and scores of Southerners fell.

One who survived staggered back to the Confederate line and mumbled, it's a

hornet's nest in there.

The name stuck.

Attack after attack was repulsed by Prentiss.

Grant himself arrived on the scene and, recognizing the vital importance of the

position, ordered Prentiss to hold at all hazards.

The Confederates attacked all up and down the Union lines, but lack of

coordination meant that the assaults went in piecemeal.

Individual brigades fought fierce skirmishes without support from their

neighbors.

The uncoordinated Southern attacks were driven back and, for a time, the Union

lines steadied.

With his assault waves failing to break the Union line, Johnston took personal

command of one regiment and led it in a desperate charge, hoping to ignite a

general attack.

Buoyed by the bravery of their commanding general, the Southern troops

swept forward, but were not able to crack the Federal defenses.

As Johnston tries to lead this regiment forward in the attack and re-spark the

offensive of the Confederate army, He's wounded in the knee by a ball and is

taken to the rear, where he later bleeds to death, becoming the first commander

of an army in American military history to die on the field of battle.

With his death, the command of the Confederate forces devolves to

Beauregard. It was now about 3 p.m., and the defenders of the Hornet's Nest had

been under direct attack for hours, yet the Confederates had failed to break

through.

Beauregard reasoned that further unsupported infantry assault was futile

and brought up about 60 artillery pieces to crack what had proven to be an

exceptionally hard nut.

The barrage proved to be both deadly and effective.

Some units broke and ran, while others retreated in good order but were still

out of the fight.

And as the smoke from the Confederate guns began to clear, the dazed Union

survivors watched as the rebel infantry pressed forward with renewed vigor.

Grant's again visiting the area of the Hornet's Nest when he receives word that

Buell and Wallace will not join him on the battlefield before dark.

Assessing that this line is not going to hold much longer, he moves back to

Pittsburgh Landing and begins assembling a last-ditch defensive line there.

Finally arriving on the scene late in the day, Breckinridge moved on the Union

position, hammering at it until both the Federal flanks finally gave way.

I saw men in gray and brown clothes running through the camp on our right.

And I saw something else, too.

A gaudy sort of thing with red bars.

A rebel flag.

Private Leander Stilwell, 100th Indiana.

By 5.30, the brave defenders were literally surrounded.

General W.H.L. Wallace was dead, and Prentiss and Hurlbut had perhaps 2,000

men left to face a foe many times that number.

Unable to withdraw or fight their way out, the battered Federals surrendered.

Much has been made of the Hornet's Nest in context of the Battle of Shiloh.

Well... Actually, there's been some recent scholarship on the part of some

of the Park Service historians who have determined that instead of multiple

attacks across the open ground in front of Prentice's position, there was only

one. And the other attacks actually came up along the tree line on either side of

this open ground.

So that sort of reassessment has taken place as a result in recent years and

led to a different view of how Shiloh actually was fought.

As individuals and broken units drifted back toward Pittsburgh Landing, they

were reorganized and redeployed. With their backs to the Tennessee River, the

Federals could not afford to give another inch.

However, the troops would not be fighting unsupported.

Artillery had been craftily placed along the line, and the gunners had excellent

fields of fire.

Two gunboats on the Tennessee River formed a potent extension to Grant's

artillery concentration.

With the flanks anchored on the river and local terrain features, the Federal

troops knew the rebels could only hit them in head-on assaults.

The Confederate's final attack went forward sometime after 6 p.m., but was

checked by heavy fire from Grant's massed batteries.

Reinforcements were rushed in to support the advance, but as the sun slipped

below the horizon, Beauregard ordered the attackers to break off.

During the night, fresh men from Wallace and Buell's divisions, which arrived

after dark, were fed into the line.

While Beauregard spent the night in Sherman's captured tent, Confident of

victory, Grant spent a miserable night in the rain huddled under a tree,

planning an assault that would drive the Confederates reeling back over the

bloody fields of Shiloh.

At daybreak, the Federals attacked.

With some 20,000 fresh troops, the Federals swarmed over the tired and

dispirited rebels.

They gave ground and through the morning and afternoon were pushed back over the

very fields they had shed so much blood to take the day before.

By late afternoon, Beauregard had given the order to withdraw back to Corinth.

There should have been a pursuit of the defeated Southerners, but as Sherman

later explained, I assure you that we had quite enough of their society for

two whole days, and we were only too glad to be rid of them on any terms.

As night fell, a blessed lull descended over the field.

The Battle of Shiloh was over.

Shiloh had been a nightmare of violence and destruction for both sides, with

more than 23,000 men killed or wounded.

The carnage shocked soldier and civilian alike, and prompted one observer to

write, Men lying in every conceivable position, piles of dead soldiers,

mangled bodies, no heads, legs.

The scenes of this field would cure anybody of war.

The casualties at Shiloh were so enormous they outstripped the dead and

wounded in all the other major battles of the war to date combined.

Afterward, nobody dared speak of quick victories and bloodless glory.

The war would be a fight to the finish with, as Grant put it, southern dash

pitted against northern pluck and endurance.

One of the South's most costly casualties was General Albert Sidney

Johnston.

leaves a void in leadership for the Confederacy in the West because he was

really the only personality that could bring all the disparate commanders

together and form a cohesive force.

In the North, rumors that a drunken, beaten Grant was only saved by the

providential arrival of Buell caused a public outcry.

Lincoln was besieged by Republican leaders who believed that Grant had

become a political liability and that he should be relieved of his command.

The president listened patiently.

then said, I can't spare this man.

He fights.

Had it not been for the arrival of fresh troops, it's debatable whether Grant

would have been so aggressive on the second day.

In many ways, Shiloh set the tone and style for what was to follow.

After Shiloh, Confederate fortunes in the West went steadily downhill.

All along the Mississippi, the federal tide was flowing forward as the Union's

brown water flotillas spearheaded the capture of key positions along the

river. There were a series of islands and other places along the riverbank

where the Confederates had defended and put up fortifications to prevent the

Union from coming down the Mississippi.

And island number 10 was a critical one. And a special assault team was put

together that was able to seize the island.

With island 10's capture, Union control of the Mississippi River ran all the way

to the very gates of Memphis.

To further put pressure on the South, the Union Navy launched a bold upriver

attack against New Orleans, little more than two weeks after the fall of Island

10.

New Orleans was defended by two forts, Jackson and St. Philip, located

downstream near the mouth of the Mississippi.

But Union Captain David G. Farragut was convinced he could force his way

through.

On the night of April 24th, he led his fleet past the enemy strongholds. The

Confederates responded with an intense barrage, but only one of the Union ships

was lost.

Farragut continued upstream, and soon the guns of his ships were trained on

the waterfront of New Orleans.

The city surrendered on April 28th.

New Orleans was the largest city in the South, and economically was the most

important as well. And the fact that it fell so early in April of 1862 to

Farragut was really a huge blow to the South. They never really recovered fully

from it, and the Union benefited, and the first step of their anaconda plan to

take over the Mississippi River and strangle the South was going into place

on schedule.

Two months later, the Union's brown water flotilla above Memphis launched a

stinging attack on that city.

Memphis, for the Confederates, was a very tough city to defend.

It only had mild bluffs, really. They didn't have a lot of artillery there,

and they tried to put together what they called cotton clads, which were

basically... Wooden ships they tried to reinforce with cotton bales, and they

also didn't have the naval expertise the North did. So the battle there was very

brief. Citizens got to watch it from the bluffs of the city, but there was never

really any question of the contest, and the North just spanked the South hard

there and took over the city very quickly.

After a year of open warfare, the South had virtually lost control of its most

important inland waterway, the Mississippi River.

Worse for the Confederacy, the industrial and technological capacity of

the North was just beginning to establish its supremacy.

If there is a lesson from Memphis, it is if this comes down to a war of iron and

steel and steam, the Confederacy will lose.

While Union forces in the West were scoring success after success along the

Mississippi River, In the East, the Army of the Potomac had been inactive for

months.

Finally, President Lincoln personally intervened and ordered General McClellan

to move his command south against Richmond.

In 1862, McClellan's plan...

for operations against Richmond had the entire Army of the Potomac being put

aboard US Navy vessels and carried to Fortress Monroe.

So basically, he used the Navy to get around the Confederates at Bull Run. And

from Fortress Monroe, he was going to launch an attack against Richmond from

the east.

Now, much has been said about McClellan's generalship, but to his

credit, this plan was a remarkable use of strategic mobility and strategic

assets.

Before the Army could be moved, however, the threat posed by the ironclad CSS

Virginia, a former Union warship known originally as the Merrimack, had to be

eliminated. One of the things about the Civil War that sometimes just amazes me

is the fact that if you had written things in a novel, people wouldn't

believe you. And one of the best cases is the so-called Monitor and Merrimack.

Here are two ships being built simultaneously, and there's a rush on

the deadline to get these... these new type of ships built, which are

ironclads. In other words, they're wooden ships, but they have a sheathing

of iron, and the reason for that is to deflect the cannonballs that are going

to be fired at them, so they can withstand that, survive this kind of

cannonade, and continue to inflict damage on the enemy. This would put them

at a tremendous advantage against, say, wooden ships.

But the Merrimack, or Virginia, was going to try and break the blockade

there at Norfolk.

And if it could succeed, then the South had a chance to eliminate the blockade

and do as much shipping and economic trade as they could possibly get, which

would help their long-term prospects.

In early March, the Virginias sailed into Hampton Roads, where several large

Union warships patrolled the inlet.

The Virginia went out the first day and sank some Union ships and put others

aground. And the next day, when it went back to finish the job and eliminate the

blockade of the wooden ships,

it discovered the monitor.

On March 8, 1862, the two vessels clashed at Hampton Roads.

Samuel Lewis, a gunloader on the monitor, later recalled the exchange.

The din inside the turret was something terrific.

The noise of every solid ball that hit fell upon our ears with a crash that

deafened us. The immense volume of smoke and narrow apertures to see through made

maneuvering very difficult, and at times we had hard work telling where the enemy

was.

Samuel Lewis, USS Monitor.

Well, when the great battle between the two ironclads starts between the

Virginia and the Monitor, it's a non-event.

They just hammer away at each other, doing minimal damage.

It just proves the point that iron is a lot better defense against heavy rifled

shells than wood.

Though this first engagement between the new type of ship was inconclusive, the

significance of the event was undeniable.

Strategically, it meant that the South didn't have the technological expertise

or the advantage over the wooden ships anymore, and the Union built more

ironclads, which not only helped them in the blockade along the coastline, but

also helped them on all the rivers with inland as they built ironclads that

could have a shallower draft and get up and down the rivers.

With the Virginia safely contained in the James River, McClellan now felt free

to move the Army of the Potomac onto the Yorktown Peninsula.

That move was conducted brilliantly, and by mid-spring of 1862, McClellan had an

army of about 100,000 men in Virginia.

Once ashore, McClellan gets bottled up by a force that he outnumbered 10 to 1.

And that gave General Johnston just enough time to move the entire

Confederate Army or the rest of the Confederate Army south and take up

positions to defend Richmond's eastern approaches.

Though confronted by only token opposition, McClellan cautiously

advanced toward the Confederate capital.

Convinced he was heavily outnumbered, he barraged Lincoln with desperate pleas

for more troops.

To prevent any such reinforcement, Stonewall Jackson, who had a force of

about 17,000 men operating in the Shenandoah Valley, was directed to give

the impression that he meant to drive on Washington.

His actions tied up thousands of Union troops.

Meanwhile, back on the peninsula, Joe Johnston ordered an attack on the

ponderous McClellan.

Resulting Battle of Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks, was inconclusive, but the

consequences of the engagement were enormous.

General Johnson is wounded during this engagement, and so Jefferson Davis turns

to his close military advisor, Robert E. Lee, and gives him command of the Army

of Northern Virginia.

Lee immediately realizes that the Federal Army is too numerous, and

McClellan is too well supplied for him to be allowed to remain near Richmond.

So he immediately begins to devise a method to attack McClellan and force him

back away from the capital.

On June 12th, Lee sent out his cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, to confirm the

deployment of the Union forces.

Based on Stuart's report, the southern commander began to mass his troops for

an attack.

On June 26th, Lee hurled his troops against the Federals, starting the first

of the Seven Days Battles, a campaign that successfully drove McClellan back

upon his supply base at Harrison's Landing.

The Seven Days Campaign is a rather mismanaged event.

The armies are not well coordinated, the blows are not well coordinated, but his

objective, when we see the emergence of the genius of Lee...

is even if his battles are bungled, he's not fighting the Federal Army, he's

fighting McClellan.

He feels, if I can beat McClellan, if I can force him back, I will win.

Though the Union forces won virtually every one of the battles, General

McClellan had lost heart, and the Army of the Potomac's campaign of 1862 lay in

ruins. Lee had lifted the siege of Richmond and driven back the Union's

larger forces.

The way was now clear for him to take the offensive and strike at the North.

It was now July 1862, a full year since the first great clash at Manassas

along the banks of Bull Run.

And for the North, the war was not going as hoped.

Though the success of its Western armies was encouraging, in the East, the great

push toward Richmond had ended in failure.

McClellan's bid to seize the Confederate capital had ended instead with his

troops forced back to Harrison's landing.

The conclusion of the Peninsula campaign leaves Lincoln with what he feared.

McClellan bottled up on the Peninsula and nothing between the Confederates and

Washington. Now, let us read...

Remember back to the events of Island No. 10. The Federals have won. John Pope

is a hero.

Lincoln starts setting up a new army, the Army of Virginia, to make a blocking

force. He brings in John Pope to command this army.

So his victory at Island No. 10 now puts an incompetent himself in command of the

blocking force between the Confederates and Washington.

Boastful and conceited, John Pope set out to implement Lincoln's plan to

defeat Lee.

With McClellan's Army of the Potomac occupying a large number of southern

troops on the peninsula, Lincoln believed the Army of Virginia could be

sent against Richmond from the north.

He reasoned that the Confederates would not have enough men to hold McClellan

and fight Pope, whose combined forces would greatly outnumber those of the

Confederacy and General Lee.

A coordinated assault such as the one Lincoln envisioned could overwhelm the

southern forces and bring a quick end to the war, a prospect that was extremely

desirable. The stakes were high for the Union in this offensive in August of

1862. Lincoln knew that the blockade was having an effect in Europe and to

forestall... intervention or recognition by any of the governments in Europe, he

wanted to either end the war with this offensive or secure such a Union victory

as to discourage any kind of European involvement.

As Pope began to move south toward Richmond along the line of the Orange

and Alexandria Railroad, Lee took stock of the situation.

pope's advance could only mean that the union meant to trap his army of northern

virginia in a vice yet he surmised that the cautious mcclellan was a less

significant threat than pope leaving longstreet to face mcclellan lee sent

jackson and a p hill north to hold up pope's advance jackson soon saw an

opportunity to strike at the small and isolated corps of nathaniel banks

stationed just south of culpeper virginia About noon on August 9th, just

west of Cedar Mountain, a skirmish began that quickly developed into a battle.

Bank's men fought vigorously.

The battle went well for them in its early stages.

The Union troops smashed Jackson's left flank and for a time threatened the

Confederate general with defeat.

But when A.P. Hill's Reserve Division was called into battle, the Union forces

began to lose momentum.

Greatly outnumbered, the Federals fell back, at first in good order.

But soon the retreat became a full-scale panic.

By nightfall, banks had been driven back toward Culpeper.

The sharp action at Cedar Mountain convinced Lee that Pope's army posed a

considerable threat, and when news that McClellan's army of the Potomac had

begun to embark from the peninsula, Longstreet was ordered north.

Lee began looking for a way to penetrate Pope's line along the Rappahannock

before federal reinforcements could arrive.

Taking an enormous risk, Lee split his forces and sent Stonewall Jackson on a

wide sweep through the Bull Run Mountains while he remained with

Longstreet to keep Pope occupied along the Rappahannock. On August 26th,

Jackson came down like a thunderbolt on Pope's main supply depot at Manassas

Junction.

The Confederates cut the rail lines leading north, destroyed what they

couldn't take with them, and then disappeared from sight.

Enraged, Pope set out in search of Jackson.

As Pope was pursuing and attempting to attack Jackson, his real failure is one

of reconnaissance and security.

He failed to clarify the situation and find out where Robert E. Lee and the

rest of the Army of Northern Virginia really was.

Leaving one division behind to simulate the activity of an entire army, Lee had

followed Jackson's flanking route with Longstreet's corps.

Meanwhile, Jackson and his 25,000 men were camped near the old battlefield of

Bull Run.

When Longstreet was reported to be within a day's march, Stonewall struck

at a Union force near Groveton.

The resulting firefight was a standoff, but it succeeded in focusing Pope's

attention on Jackson while Lee came up.

The unwitting federal commander had been guided into a trap, and the next day he

would launch an attack that would become one of the North's greatest defeats.

On the morning of August 29th, Pope sent his forces against the Confederates.

55,000 Federals would face Jackson's 25,000, who had established a fine

defensive position behind an unfinished railroad embankment.

Time and again, Jackson's men threw back the Union attackers.

At day's end, they still held their position.

Pope, however, was convinced he had won a victory, completely unaware that

Longstreet's Corps were drawn up on the Federal left.

They lay in wait as Pope renewed his effort the next day.

Shortly after noon, the Union forces attacked, with Fitz John Porter's corps

on the left making the main effort.

But the initiative soon passed to the Confederates.

Preceded by an artillery barrage, Longstreet's men fell on the Union left.

The only units facing this onslaught were two Zouave regiments, the 5th and

10th New York Volunteers.

Within 20 minutes, 300 of the 500 members of the 5th New York were down,

and the remainder fled, saving their colors.

Longstreet's five divisions rolled up the Union flank, driving Pope's now

exhausted men before them.

Jackson's men joined the fight, and as at first bull run, the fighting became

oriented on Henry House Hill.

The battered Union troops rallied there, though it was now obvious the battle was

lost.

The thin line of Federals fought courageously, allowing a retreat in good

order.

There was little dispute in the aftermath of the battle. The Federals

had been outmarched and outgeneraled again.

Within days, Pope was relieved and sent west to fight Indians, and the units of

his former army absorbed into McClellan's Army of the Potomac.

Lee was elated with the victory.

In the three months since he took command, the Army of Northern Virginia

had advanced from defeat outside Richmond to victory at the outskirts of

Washington. Lee was now poised to take the war across the Potomac into the

North.

On September 5, 1862, Confederate forces crossed into Maryland, a border state

as yet untouched by battle, rich in crops and rife with secessionist

sentiment. Hoping to bring the state into the Confederacy, Lee was given no

hero's welcome by the people of Maryland, who looked upon his troops as

invaders come to plunder the land.

Yet in spite of the cool reception, Lee's plans remained unchanged.

As he had before, Lee divided his army.

Jackson, with Major General Lafayette McClaws, was sent to capture the large

federal garrison at Harper's Ferry and secure a valuable exit route, while

Longstreet proceeded north toward Hagerstown.

Smaller units were dispatched far and wide on a variety of missions.

Widely separated, the Southerners could expect little support in the event of a

federal attack.

This was the situation when, through a stroke of luck, McClellan came into

possession of Lee's orders.

At the beginning of the campaign, a couple of Union soldiers found Lee's

entire blueprint for his invasion wrapped around a couple of cigars.

They passed this amazing intelligence find up the chain of command, and

McClellan looked these over and said to his staff, if I can't beat Bobby Lee

with these, then I deserve to be sent home.

And, of course, within the month, he would eat his words.

If McClellan had moved fast, he could have placed his forces between the two

major sections of Lee's army. But as he had on the peninsula, McClellan moved

too slowly to exploit his advantage.

Lee soon learned about the lost orders and immediately took action.

D.H. Hill was sent to hold the passes of South Mountain while the southern

commander began to pull the balance of his scattered forces together.

Accompanied by Jeb Stuart's cavalry, Hill deployed at Turner's Gap, the

principal target of McClellan's advance.

As huge numbers of bluecoats headed their way, the grim Confederates dug in.

Though the odds were long, the survival of the Army of Northern Virginia lay in

their hands.

About midday on September 14th, the leading Union column approached the Gap.

They met bitter resistance.

Hill and his men fought like demons and stubbornly resisted McClellan's advance.

Surprised by the tenacity of the defense, the Union commander called in

his reinforcements, but the resulting lull in the fighting allowed Longstreet

to reinforce Hill.

For the rest of the day, units on both sides arrived piecemeal and went into

action against each other.

The fighting lasted most of the day with no advantage being gained by either

side. Greatly outnumbered, Hill's men managed to hold the Northerners back

until well after dark when they withdrew to avoid annihilation.

At Crampton's Gap, several miles south, William Franklin faced a small

Confederate force under General Lafayette McLaws, recently arrived from

Harper's Ferry.

Outnumbered three to one, the southern troops were forced to give up the fences

and stone walls they defended.

and retreat out of the gap and into the valley beyond, where they set up a

delaying position.

The way was clear for Franklin's troops to move to the relief of Harper's Ferry,

yet Franklin stalled at the sight of McClaw's brigade drawn up in the valley

beyond South Mountain.

As the daylight slipped away, so too did a tremendous opportunity.

With McClellan now in possession of the South Mountain Passes, Lee decided to

withdraw back into Virginia.

But news that Stonewall Jackson had captured Harper's Ferry altered the

situation. Harper's Ferry really fell to Jackson without much difficulty.

And this kind of surprising ease with which it was captured gave Robert E. Lee

the hope that he'd be able to consolidate his forces and risk a battle

with McClellan.

Knowing that Jackson would soon join him, Lee made a fateful decision.

There would be no further retreat.

The Army of Northern Virginia would stand at Sharpsburg.

The small town of Sharpsburg, located just west of the meandering Antietam

Creek, was well suited for defense.

A succession of rail and stone fences, waist-high outcroppings of limestone,

sunken roads and wooded areas offered numerous possibilities.

Properly utilized, this kind of cover would help to balance the odds.

Lee had only about 18,000 men in position when McClellan's masses hove

into view late on the 15th.

With at least double the number of men his opponent possessed and more on the

way, an immediate attack by McClellan would have crushed Lee.

But that was not McClellan's way.

He spent the entire day on the 16th polishing his battle plan, which called

for Hooker and Sumner to strike at Lee's left flank, while Burnside's corps

pinned down the Confederate right at the Rohrbach Bridge.

Fitz John Porter's Corps and Alfred Pleasanton's cavalry remained in reserve

near the center, ready to exploit any breakthrough.

The blessed gift of time allowed the Confederates to nearly double the size

of their force, leaving A.P. Hill the only absentee as dawn broke on September

17th.

At about 6 a.m., the Union attack began.

Hooker's Man with Abner Doubleday on the right and George Meade on the left

collided with Stonewall's Man and Miller's Cornfield and the rolling

meadows on all sides of it.

Failing to attack en masse, the Union commanders wasted their advantage in

numbers and the battle surged back and forth as casualty rates soared and both

sides rushed reinforcements into the fight.

By 7 a.m., the Confederate left was reeling.

but John Bell Hood's division burst through the shattered Confederate line

and stopped the Federal advance cold.

Counterattacking fearlessly, Hood's men nearly reclaimed the field, only to have

one of Meade's brigades cut them down.

One regiment lost fully 80% of its men in just a few volleys.

Hood had smashed Hooker's attack and knocked the first corps out of the

fight, but his own division had been devastated.

When asked where it was, he replied sadly, dead on the field.

After 90 minutes of the most savage fighting yet seen in the war,

McClellan's battle plan had been severely compromised.

He called on Mansfield's reserve not to capitalize on success, but to turn the

tide.

By 9 a.m., the weight of numbers began to tell, and the Confederates began

pulling back, abandoning the ground they had defended against tremendous odds.

Thus far, the Federals had concentrated their entire effort on the Confederate

left. Lee gambled that the trend would continue and sent McLaws to reinforce

Hood's shattered unit.

His timing could not have been better.

After picking their way through the carnage of the cornfield, John

Sedgwick's Federals were fallen upon by McClaw's reinforcements. They opened

fire with murderous effect, and the Confederates quickly began to push

Sedgwick back.

In less than 20 minutes of intense combat, nearly half of Sedgwick's men

had been added to the casualty lists, and the rest were in flight.

With Sedgwick's repulse, the focus of Federal attention finally shifted to the

Confederates' center.

where D.H. Hill occupied a so-called sunken road, a natural earthwork shaped

by years of wagon traffic.

Swinging wide to the left around Sedgwick, French moves his division

forward towards the sunken road.

Waiting for him there are the men of D.H. Hill, who, as the Federals approach

at a range of about 100 yards, rise up and they deliver this devastating

volley, pretty much decimating the lead brigade.

So the 2nd and 3rd Brigades join the fight in turn.

and the ferocity of the fighting around the central road increases.

The fury of the fighting drew men from adjacent areas as the sunken road was

shaping up to be the central contest of the battle.

General Israel Richardson's Federal Division joined the attack, even as Lee

sent Anderson's division in.

For two hours, the volleys from the road, the din of Yankee artillery, and

the savage assaults continued unabated.

Finally, due to the confusion caused by a limited Union breakthrough, the

Confederate line began to collapse, and the Southerners began to abandon the

position that had caused so much havoc.

Yet just beyond the sunken road, the Federals were stopped cold by a

counterattack led by Longstreet and Hill.

Artillery soon arrived, and Richardson's men were forced back across the hard-won

little road that was soon to be called Bloody Lane.

While the Confederates had gambled everything to contain their foe,

McClellan would risk nothing.

With more than 20,000 fresh troops at hand and only Longstreet's cannon in the

way, McClellan abandoned any idea of pushing through the rebel center.

Inevitably, the focus shifted to the federal left and Ambrose Burnside, whose

IX Corps had spent the morning as spectators.

Sometime around 10 a.m., Burnside sent forward the first of his brigades with

orders to rush the Rohrbach Bridge.

No more than 500 rebels faced the Union assault, but the strength of their

position on a high bluff overlooking the bridge made up for the disparity in

numbers. Rebel fire swept the span, and hours passed with no progress being

made.

As the rebel force ran low on ammunition, the slackening fire gave the

Bluecoats an opportunity, and soon tightly packed columns of Federal troops

began to race across the bridge.

In the face of the Union advance, the Confederates began to withdraw toward

Sharpsburg, but the time they had bought would prove crucial.

McClellan ordered Burnside to press his advantage, but hours passed while

reinforcements and ammunition were brought forward. With virtually no

Confederates between them and Sharpsburg, the IX Corps didn't get

moving again until around 3 o'clock.

Lee's really in a tight spot at this point. He only has one very tired

battered brigade between the Union forces and the Fords across the Potomac.

If his right collapses, then there will be no retreat from the Army of Northern

Virginia. They will be trapped against the river without any hope of escape.

But it was precisely at this moment, in a case of unparalleled timing, that A.P.

Hill arrived from Harper's Ferry.

After a grueling march that had covered 17 miles in eight hours, Hill arrived in

perfect position to rescue the Confederate flank.

The rebels filed into line and slammed into Burnside's men.

By nightfall, the Federals had been pushed back nearly to the bridge.

The fighting tapered off, and the exhausted men on both sides collapsed.

It had been the bloodiest single day in American military history, with

casualties for both sides exceeding 36,000.

After an uneasy day spent expecting a Union attack that never came, Lee

retreated with his army back into Virginia on September 19th. He had

failed in his mission.

Maryland did not rally to the Confederacy, nor did European powers

intervene on the South's behalf.

Antietam signaled the first clear-cut Union victory in the East, and in its

wake, President Lincoln would issue a proclamation.

that would forever change the course of American history.