"The Battle Opened"

At dawn on September 17, 1862, Southern defenders saw the Union First Corps advancing in apparent double battle lines with bayonets gleaming in the morning sun, while Union General Joseph Hooker saw Confederate forces filling the cornfield before him. Hooker brought up 36 cannon and shattered the northern part of the cornfield and the men in it, then sent First Corps forward toward the Dunker Church. General George B. McClellan, watching from headquarters across Antietam Creek, believed Hooker was driving the Confederates, but two Confederate divisions, Starke's and Lawton's, stopped the first Union attack. The Federals rallied and attacked again, only to be stopped once more when Brigadier General John Bell Hood's division charged up from behind the church. Hooker's men were driven back to their starting position in the North Woods, while the survivors in Major General "Stonewall" Jackson's Corps waited for the next Federal advance.

Maryland · United States