The Fate of the Army

After defending the Lower (Burnside) Bridge, Confederate forces fell back to this ridge and then to the high ground west of this point. When the final Union attack began, more than 2,000 Confederate soldiers and more than forty cannon stretched from the National Cemetery south toward Millers Sawmill Road. More than 8,000 Federal troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside formed on the ridge 300 yards to the east, and at 3:00 p.m. the attack began. A few regiments from Gen. Isaac Rodman's division advanced to the high ground 400 yards to the west, and Col. Harrison Fairchild said they charged over the fence, dislodged the Confederates, and drove them down the hill toward the village. When it appeared that the Federals had finally gotten the better of Lee's army, Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill and his men arrived after starting the day at Harpers Ferry and marching seventeen miles to the battlefield. Hill's foot-weary soldiers struck the Union flank in the face of tremendous artillery fire, and Burnside's men fell back to the protection of the ridge 300 yards to the east. That evening more than 23,000 Union and Confederate wounded and dead covered the fields around Sharpsburg, and both armies held almost the same positions they had occupied when the day began. Neither Lee nor McClellan renewed the battle the next day, and on the evening of September 18, Lee began his retreat across the Potomac River and back to Virginia. A.P. Hill was born in Virginia, graduated from West Point in 1847, fought in the Mexican and Seminole Wars, fought in every major Civil War battle in the east, and was killed outside Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2, 1865, at age 39. Isaac P. Rodman, born in 1822, commanded a Union division of 3,200 soldiers until he was shot in the chest on the hill in front of this point; he died on September 20, 1862, at age 40 and was buried in his family's cemetery in Peace Dale, Rhode Island. Lawrence O. Branch, born in 1820 in North Carolina, graduated from Princeton, had earlier served briefly as a general's aide during the Second Seminole War, led one of A.P. Hill's brigades at Antietam, and was the last of six generals mortally wounded there when a bullet passed through his cheek and killed him instantly.

Shepherdstown, Maryland · United States