Carnage in a Cornfield

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It was mid-afternoon. A onetime lumberman from the Wildcat District stood knee-deep in the amber-colored water of a small stream. Was it a good fishing stream, he wondered? Back in his native Pennsylvania hills a little creek like this almost certainly would be full of speckled trout. A non-com snapped the Bucktail out of his reverie and he never did find out if there were trout in the Antietam.[1]

Meade's Pennsylvanians, with Hooker's entire First Corps, were crossing the creek above Sharpsburg. They were

to get into position for an attack from the north upon the Confederate left. It was a part of the battle plan that General

McClellan had been leisurely working out. Downstream below the village the Ninth Corps was to attack the other end

of the Southern line. As soon as the movements on the flanks gained headway, the Union center, where several corps were available, would also advance. That apparently was the way it was hoped things would work out as Hooker led his men over the rolling land toward the Hagerstown Turnpike .[2]

The troops were to get in position to attack the next morning, September 1 . The Pennsylvania Reserves were restin'ed to take part in a preview of t e attle that very afternoon. For the Bucktails it would be as bad and bloody as the bitter battle itself. Confederate guns soon started sending over shells. No damage was being done yet, but it clearly

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showed that the enemy had discovered the Union movement. The First Corps moved slowly along over fields owned by farmers with somewhat unusual names like Poffenberger and Middlekauff. Ahead Rebel units occupied positions which the history books would give place names that have become synonymous with sanguinary. There was a white Dunker Church, hard by the pike where a road branched off running northeast through a grove to be called the East Wood. Back of the little church toward the Potomac was the West Wood. The landscape was dotted with cornfields. One of these, which would become the Cornfield, lay between the two woods on the east side of the Hagerstown Pike. The soldiers probably never heard of Poffenberger and Middlekauff. Those who fought there would never forget the Cornfield. Neither would history.

The First Corps was about twelve thousand strong. Meade's Pennsylvania Reserves were in the lead. Seymour's First Brigade led the division, and by order of Hooker himself four companies of Bucktails had been pushed out as skirmishers. This job of feeling for the enemy was becoming an old story for the First Rifles. That, however, made the task no more pleasant. They had performed this kind of work too many times before ever to take it lightly. Of late many had been wondering just how many more battles they could bring about and live to remember. Ahead of them was the East Wood, a fine clean-looking grove. Hidden among those trees were men of Confederate General John B. Hood, good fighters from deep in Dixie. The farmers had been at their fall plowing. Across a field of freshly turned sod at the edge of the woods was the gray skirmish line. The Bucktails would soon hear from their Rebel opposite members.

The fighting began as it always did when two lines of skirmishers gradually came close enough together. This time

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there was nothing gradual about it. This time it seemed that it was more sudden an vicious than ever before. Raking Rebel infantry fire flashed across the plowed field. From the right a battery poured in grape and canister, and from the left Southern cannoneers began throwing shell. The six remaining Bucktail companies immediately came up to assist their comrades, and soon Seymour had his entire brigade advancing toward the East Wood. Cooper's reliable battery was brought in to reply to the Confederate guns. To the right of Seymour the Second and Third Brigades were deployed with Ransom's Battery. In the rear a battery of howitzers under Lieutenant John G. Simpson began shelling the Rebel positions. A tough little fight was shaping up, and right out in front was Colonel Hugh W McNeil and his Bucktails. The infantry fire coming from the woods did not once slacken, and the Union batteries had not been at work long enough to put a stop to the enemy artillery fire. To reach the East Wood McNeil must advance his men over plowed ground in the face of a withering fire. This is exactly what he did. With McNeil in the lead, the First Rifles started across the furrows. This was no shoulder to shoulder charge with lines carefully dressed every time a Rebel bullet made a gap. The practical way of getting across the uneven ground against that kind of fire was to run a few furrows at a time and then fall flat and fire, every time thanking God for those breech-loading Sharps. In that way the Bucktails reached the woods.

They gained the woods, but they had lost their colonel. Hugh McNeil ,volunteer officer, in just three battles was becoming a capable combat skinner. A ball caught him in the heart as he was leading his men into the East Wood. His last words had been: "Forward, Bucktails." The Bucktail chaplain, W. H. D. Hatton, stayed with his colonel's life-

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less body, and also rode herd over a group of captured Confederates. With McNeil's last command still echoing in their hearts amid the external din of battle, the Wildcats, or a few revengeful moments, fought like the animal from which came their name. Over the fence they clambered and from tree to tree in the smoky woods they drove the Rebels who had killed their colonel. It was no gallant charge of the storybook wars but a cold, careful, calculated drive to push the enemy out of the way and eliminate those who would not be pushed. They fought mad all through the grove. Just before night put an end to the fighting, the Bucktails got the Confederates out of the East Wood for a time, and helped to secure Hooker's left flank. Perhaps they got the anger over their skipper's death out of their hearts. Certainly the sorrow

remained.[3]

The night was dark and a drizzling rain had started. "Fighting Joe" Hooker foresook his tent for the barn of a

farmer by the name of Miller near the Hagerstown Pike and directly in the rear of the Bucktails and Seymour's other

regiments. The rain on the roof did not keep the corps commander awake, but the desultory firing on the picket line

did. About nine o'clock there was so much noise on Seymour's front that Hooker got up and paid a visit to the line just to assure himself that the clatter was due only to pickets more nervous than usual. Seymour was farther advanced than any other unit and and the corps commander found out that the pickets could readily hear every movement of the enemy outposts, although the black. wet night blotted out all sight of the a soldiers. Hooker went back to his barn. The picket line continued to snap and crackle. The rain kept up. Every weary soldier along Seymour's line hugged his gun on the cold, damp ground and tried to get a little rest between battles.

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The day dawned, bleak and ominous, after a night of nervous expectancy. With McNeil dead, the command of the Bucktails had fallen upon Captain Dennis McGee, of Company F. This honest Irishman realized that Adjutant Ross Hartshorne, company K, could better handle the regiment than he, and it was Hartshorne who would lead the Bucktails that day.[4]

The fighting seemed to resume automatically. The division of the wounded General Hatch, now commanded by Abner Doubleday, was to the right of the Reserves on the Hagerstown Turnpike, Ricketts' was on the left of Meade's men near the East Wood. During the dark, rainy night Mansfield's Twelfth Corps had plodded up and was ready to support Hooker. Had any Bucktail been interested as to what was up ahead of him in that gray, misty dawn, other than Confederate soldiers, he probably could not have found out by peering across the countryside. But less than a mile ahead on high ground was the little white Dunker Church. Hooker a chosen that ground as the objective of the morning's work . On the near side of the Dunker Church was the a Cornfield.

The Bucktail skirmishers, advancing slowly on Seymour's front, soon had to stop altogether and take cover. From the Cornfield ahead there were coming up too many patches of white smoke. The field was full of Southern soldiers. Soon the Federal artillery started the grim job of cutting the corn with canister. From farther away shot and shell from other northern guns found their way into the rows of tall, green corn. After the blazing guns had riddled the Cornfield and had killed and maimed a good many-Confederate soldiers caught there, the Union line advanced. It almost seems that from then on no one could ever tell a clear story of what happened . The fighting was so confused, so bloody, so awful.

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Bucktail Captain Dennis McGee, new at composing battle reports, a few days later wrote a fair report as to South Mountain and the action of the 16th. As to that day in the Cornfield , he wrote nothing it sheds any light as what his regiment actually did amidst the noise and smoke of the mad melee. The regimental historians, never very accurate in their battle descriptions, were worse than usual when they tried to describe their outfit's part in the desperate struggle between the men of "Fighting Joe" Hooker and the men of Stonewall Jackson in Mr. Miller's cornfield.

The conflict in the Cornfield that September morning was a terrible game of see saw. Seymour's first brigade drove the Rebels back over the bodies of their own dead for a while. Somewhere near the center of that by then shredded

field of corn the Southerners rallied, and it was Seymour's turn to fall back over dead and wounded boys in blue uniforms. Meade had his Second and Third Brigades at hand to help cover the withdrawal of the First, but Hooker wanted

a brigade sent to the East Wood to help Ricketts' men. So Colonel A. L. Magilton had to pull out his Second Brigade

when he was badly needed where he was. Meade dashed up to Ransom's Battery, and soon the guns were belching can-

ister through the space left open by the Second Brigade. Seymour’s Brigade was about done in and almost without

ammunition. For a while it went better on Hooker's left where Ricketts was fighting in the woods, and Robert An-

derson's Third Brigade made some progress in the bloody Cornfield. Part of Doubleday's Division got nearly to the

Dunker Church and across the turnpike near the West Wood. Then Hood's Texans, whom the Bucktails had met in the East Wood the day before, drove the Yankees back through the Cornfield. The-First Corps, after several hours of bitter fighting, was comletey used up, Hooker knew it

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was time for General Joseph K. F. Mansfield's Twelfth Corps to take over.

Mansfield, stalwart old soldier that he was, went into the Cornfield and his men fought desperately . They were cut to pieces and Old Man Mansfield was killed. Shortly it was the turn of Sumner's Second Corps. It, too, was chewed a by the Confederate ensilage choppers. Major General William B. Franklin was mad because he could not get into the carnage with his entire Sixth Corps, but McClellan said no. That was the way it went all morning and into the afternoon---piecemeal attacks and disjointed fighting by good soldiers who fought other good soldiers whose commander was probably a bit desperate, but apparently knew what he was doing. Then later in the afternoon the fighting got started down on the Union left when Burnside's Ninth Corps finally was under way. This belated movement met with considerable success for a while, but the Confederate division of A. P. Hill arrived just in time. Stern Stonewall Jackson had temporarily released Hill from the military “dog house" for the Harpers Ferry expedition. Hill had performed the final chores at the Ferry, and by good marching, arrived at Sharpsburg when he was most needed.[5]

And so the battle ended. The two armies had outslugged each other. Both were knocked out. Over the years the e perts would make their criticisms of the entire campaign. Much would be written of this officer and that. McClellan would be the target of much finger-pointing because of his lost opportunities and what he did not do. Few in after years would think much of the 1862 GI who toiled back to the rear after the furious struggle to find a host of stragglers and skulkers already there. This was the case in every battle, but as tired, hungry Bucktails trudged back to near the Middlekauff farm that terrible day, they saw more than the usual

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number, who for one reason or another just could not take that kind of combat. As they eagerly munched on their hard

bread and boiled a little coffee, they could hear the din and see the rising smoke of the battle still being waged farther

down the Antietam.[6] It was too early then to assess the result, but soon it would be evident that for all their desperate

efforts, theirs and those of many other thin-ranked outfits, still called regiments, they had only a technical victory. The

invasion had been repulsed. That was true, and it was highly important. But the Bucktails, the Thirty-Fourth New York,

the Fifthteenth Massachusetts, and every other regiment now so under-manned, must go on fighting. Lee's Army of

Northern Virginia was just as battered as the Army of the Potomac, but it was still an intact fighting machine led by

officers of unusual ability.

All the next day the two battle-groggy armies looked at each other across that no mans an o rolling country,

broken by a still bloody stream, running near a bullet ridden cornfield and a shell-marked church, grim reminders of the slaughter of the day before. The day of watchful waiting passed, and that night Lee headed back across the Potomac. McClellan let him go.