 Burnside Bridge (43K) |
 Union soldiers' view (38K) |
 Crossing the bridge (71K) |
 Rebel soldiers' view (64K) |
Finally, at 1 p.m. the Federals crossed the 125-foot-long bridge (now known as Burnside Bridge) and, after a 2-hour delay to rest and replenish ammunition, continued their advance toward Sharpsburg.
 Zouaves in battle (59K) |
 9th NY Zouaves (32K) |
By late afternoon about 8,000 Union troops had driven the Confederates back almost to Sharpsburg, threatening to cut off the line of retreat for Lee's army. By 3:30 p.m. many Rebels jammed the streets of Sharpsburg in retreat. The battle seemed lost to the Southern army.
[Click image to see battlefield map.] Then at 3:40 p.m. Gen. A. P. Hill's
division, left behind by Jackson at Harpers Ferry to salvage the captured
Federal property, arrived on the field after a march of 17 miles in eight
hours. Immediately Hill's 3,000 troops entered the fight, attacking the
Federals' unprotected left flank. Burnside's troops were driven back to
the heights near the bridge they had taken earlier. The attack across the
Burnside Bridge and Hill's counterattack in the fields south of Antietam
resulted in 3,470 casualties--with twice as many Union casualties (2,350)
as Confederate (1,120).
Longstreet later wrote, "We were so badly crushed that at the close of the day ten thousand fresh troops could have come in and taken Lee's army and everything in it." But again McClellan held the 20,000 men of V Corps and VI Corps in reserve--and lost a second opportunity to defeat the entire Confederate army. By 5:30 p.m., the Battle of Antietam was over.
The next day Federal and Confederate leaders struck up an informal truce, so they could begin gathering up the wounded and dying. During the evening of the 18th Lee began withdrawing his army across the Potomac River.
Antietam on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Federal losses were 12,410, Confederate losses 10,700. One in four men engaged in battle that day had fallen. Some historians believe that Lee's failure to carry the war effectively into the North caused Great Britain to postpone recognition of the Confederate government. The battle also gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which, on January 1, 1863, declared free all slaves in states still in rebellion against the United States. Now the war had a dual purpose: to preserve the Union and to end slavery.
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