On the morning of September 17, 1862, along a worn farm lane outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, Confederate troops crouched behind the natural breastwork of a sunken road. They had been told to wait. John B. Gordon, the officer commanding them, had given strict orders: hold fire until the Union soldiers were close enough that the eagles on their uniform buttons could be seen.
The Federals—the 1st Delaware, 5th Maryland, and 4th New York—moved across the rolling farmland belonging to the Roulette family, unaware of what waited ahead. The fields dipped and rose in blind spots, hiding the Confederates until the last possible moment. At Gordon’s command, the volley came, and the fight for the sunken road began. Gordon had promised Robert E.
Lee that he would hold that position at all costs. As the battle raged, he took a bullet in one leg, then another in the other leg. Wounded and hobbling, he refused to leave, continuing to shout orders and keep his men in place. A third bullet struck his arm.
His men begged him to fall back, but he stayed. A fourth shot hit his shoulder. Still he held on. Before he could be moved to the rear, a bullet struck him square in the face and knocked him over.
Miraculously, he survived, though the exact circumstances of how he escaped death remain part of the battlefield’s legend. The sunken road became known as Bloody Lane, and it was here that the Irish Brigade earned its place in Civil War history. Among its officers was Thomas Francis Meagher, whose name needed no introduction even then. Meagher had complicated origins: before the war he had supported the South and sought political appointment from President Buchanan.
When the position was denied, and when the Catholic Church sided with the Union, his allegiance shifted firmly to the North. At Antietam, he led his men repeatedly across the same exposed fields, charging again and again until they pushed the Confederates out of the sunken road. The cost was terrible, but the position was taken. One of the most celebrated acts of that charge belonged to James Edward McGee.
McGee had immigrated to the United States in 1848 after the failure of the Young Ireland Movement. On October 12, 1861, he enlisted in Company F of the 69th New York and rose to become an officer. His brigade was made up of the 69th New York, the 29th Massachusetts, the 63rd New York, and the 88th New York, all advancing shoulder to shoulder through the cornfield toward the Confederate line. During the assault, the 69th’s color bearer fell, and the Irish green flag dropped to the ground.
Meagher shouted for the men to raise the colors and follow him. McGee rushed forward, declaring he would follow, snatched up the flag, and raised it above his head. A bullet struck the staff and broke it. As McGee bent to pick it up again, another bullet passed through his cap.
He jumped up, waving the flag and cheering his men forward. From a distance, General George B. McClellan witnessed the action. An aide, looking across the field, reported that the day was lost and that the Irish were fleeing.
McClellan looked again and corrected him: the flags were still up, and the Irish were charging. For his conduct, McGee was later commissioned lieutenant colonel on April 13, 1864, and mustered out of the army on October 11, 1864. He went on to write four books about his experiences. The fighting at Bloody Lane was brutal for both sides.
Later battlefield investigation, including metal detector surveys featured in a History Channel documentary, revealed why the Irish Brigade suffered so heavily crossing that ground. The terrain had numerous blind spots. Men moving forward could not see the Confederates until they emerged suddenly in front of them. The stress of the situation was so intense that many Union soldiers were dropping unspent rounds as they loaded and reloaded in frantic haste.
Among the Confederate dead left in the sunken road was Colonel Charles Tew, a South Carolinian who had graduated at the top of his class and carried an ornate sword presented by his graduating class. Mortally wounded, he lay clutching the sword to his chest. A soldier, believing him dead, tried to take it. Tew woke and clutched it tighter, and the soldier left him alone.
Later, the sword was stolen anyway, never recovered. Some believe that a famous photograph taken by Alexander Gardner in the sunken road after the battle shows Tew among the fallen. Beyond Bloody Lane, the fight continued. Confederate forces were driven back across a field toward Piper’s Cornfield, where they tried to reorganize and rejoin the main body.
Artillery under John Pelham was active elsewhere on the field. But the same position that had seemed so strong from behind the sunken road became a desperate fighting ground when overwhelming Union numbers arrived. The Confederates learned quickly that even the most perfect defensive position could become a deathtrap. Elsewhere on the battlefield, at Burnside Bridge, a smaller Confederate force held off a much larger Union attack.
Roughly 550 Georgians under General Robert Toombs defended a hill covered with trees and boulders above a narrow stone bridge. The bridge acted as a choke point, and the Confederates poured fire down on Union soldiers trying to cross. It was only when Union troops came around the flank that the position was finally taken. The battle’s aftermath left Sharpsburg and the surrounding countryside devastated.
More than 4,100 soldiers were buried in the new national cemetery at Antietam. The largest Civil War battlefield monument stands there, constructed after a mishap during transport when half of it fell into the Potomac River before being recovered and reassembled. Across the street, a civilian cemetery holds the names of local families—Poffenberger, Roulette, Cryer, Ruffner—people who lived in the area and whose ancestors witnessed the horror firsthand. It is these civilians, the people of Sharpsburg, who bore the burden of cleaning up after the battle.
They were not dead or dying, but the dead and dying were left on their land. They had to dig up bodies, help with the cleanup, and piece their town back together. This was only one day of battle at Antietam Creek, the bloodiest single day in American history. Other places like Petersburg and Richmond endured constant warfare for years, but here, the people did not ask for the war to come to their doorstep.
The story of how the Union army came to be in a position to fight at Antietam begins days earlier. After his victory at the Second Battle of Manassas, Robert E. Lee saw an opportunity to move north. He planned to split his forces, capture the garrison at Harper’s Ferry, and converge his columns at a single point to strike the main body of the Union army, threaten Washington, and perhaps break the North’s will to fight.
On September 9, 1862, Lee issued Special Orders No. 191, dispatching copies to his major commanders. One set of orders, sent to a subordinate of Stonewall Jackson, was delivered to Brigadier General D. H.
Hill. An additional copy was wrapped around a couple of cigars and left in a field near Frederick, Maryland. A Union soldier by the name of Mitchell found the orders and sent them up the chain of command. Mitchell would later be seriously wounded at the Cornfield at Antietam, but his discovery gave McClellan the enemy’s entire plan by midday.
McClellan reportedly sent word to Washington that he held the very instrument in his hands to destroy the Confederate army, and that if he failed, he would go home himself. Historians have long argued that McClellan moved too slowly even with Lee’s orders in hand. He began maneuvering his men, but the delay allowed Lee to concentrate his scattered forces in time. The orders were a turning point that set the stage for the bloodiest day of the war, but the promised destruction of Lee’s army never came.
Antietam ended as a tactical draw, though it gave President Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The battlefield today is preserved largely through the efforts of families and organizations like the American Battlefield Trust, which has purchased farmland and turned it over to the National Park Service so that future generations can walk the same ground where so many fell.