"The End of the Confederacy Was In Sight"

Major General Edwin Sumner commanded the Second Corps, the largest corps in the Union Army of the Potomac, but he never could get his three divisions together. His lead division was broken in the West Woods. Brigadier General William French's division smashed itself on the Confederate line in the Sunken Road. Finally Major General Israel Richardson's division came up beside French's and gained a position from which they could fire down the length of the Sunken Road. As a Southerner remembered, minnie balls, shot, and shell rained upon them from every direction except the rear. Orders were misunderstood, two Confederate regiments pulled out of the line, and the rest of the line crumbled as the men had either to run or surrender and ran rapidly through a large orchard. The slaughter was terrible. Southern commanders pulled in men and guns from all directions to form a new line on the Piper farm. Lee's army was ruined and the end of the Confederacy was in sight. General Richardson saw the chance and tried desperately to mount the attack that would break Lee's army in half, but he was wounded by a shellburst and the attack was never made. Soldiers grieved as he was carried from the field, and Richardson died of his wound on November 3. Southern Major General James Longstreet wrote that he put his staff officers to the guns while he held their horses, and that the men serving the artillery claimed they were there to hold or go down with the guns. The Confederate line held. Hours later the 7th Maine Regiment was ordered across the Sunken Road, now Bloody Lane, and half of the men were killed or wounded in the fields around the Piper farm. The regimental commander believed the attack had been ordered by a drunken colonel and wished he had been old enough, or distinguished enough, to have dared to disobey orders.

Keedysville, Maryland · United States