“It Is A.P. Hill”

Outnumbered Southerners watched the Union Ninth Corps climb the hills toward them, with one Confederate recalling how the gilt eagle, the top of the flag, the stars and stripes, hats, faces, and then curious eyes appeared before a Yankee cheer broke the stillness and they surged forward, while another remembered hastily emptying his musket into their lines and fleeing back through the cornfield. All day, General Robert E. Lee had shifted troops from south of town to stave off defeat at Dunker Church and Sunken Road, and now the Union Ninth Corps looked down at the town as the Army of Northern Virginia faced destruction. Combat artist Edwin Forbes sketched the 9th New York Regiment, Hawkin's Zouaves, in their distinctive uniforms at this climactic moment. Then Lee saw a column of marching men moving up southwest of town and recognized A.P. Hill arriving from Harpers Ferry. Hill's light division had left Harpers Ferry at 7:30 a.m. that morning and marched 17 miles in 8 hours, with many collapsing from exhaustion along the road, before fording the Potomac River, climbing Miller's Sawmill Road, and reaching the battlefield shortly before 4 p.m. Union observers saw the approaching column and warned General Burnside to watch his left because the enemy were moving a strong force in that direction. The 16th Connecticut, on the Union left and only three weeks in the army, was struck by a terrible volley and thrown into confusion as officers and men lacked knowledge of regimental movements. Hill's light division rolled up the last Union attack, the Ninth Corps retreated to Antietam Creek, and the battle ended.

Shepherdstown, Maryland · United States