Burnside’s Bridge
at Antietam
General Ambrose Burnside commanded the Ninth Corps on the Union
left. He sent his troops across a narrow stone bridge over Antietam
Creek, but this was overlooked by tall wooded bluffs that provided
excellent cover for the Georgian sharpshooters in the Confederate
line facing them. Later in the day, another crossing point was found at
a nearby ford, but by then it was too late. Confederate reinforcements
soon arrived and drove the Union troops back to the bridge.
“A silence fell on every one at once, for each felt that the
momentous ‘now’ had come. Just as we started I saw, with a little
shock, a line-officer take out his watch to note the hour, as
though the affair beyond the creek were a business appointment
which he was going to keep.
When we reached the brow of the hill the fringe of trees along
the creek screened the fighting entirely, and we were deployed
as skirmishers under their cover. We sat there two hours. All
that time the rest of the corps had been moving over the stone
bridge and going into position on the other side of the creek.
Then we were ordered over a ford which had been found below
the bridge ... One man was shot in mid stream ...
At the word a rush was made for the fences. The line was so
disordered by the time the second fence was passed that we
hurried forward to a shallow undulation a few feet ahead, and
lay down among the furrows to re-form, doing so by crawling up
into line ... A moment after, I heard a man cursing a comrade for
lying on him heavily. He was cursing a dying man.
As the range grew better, the firing became more rapid, the
situation desperate and exasperating to the last degree. Human
nature was on the rack, and there burst forth from it the most
vehement, terrible swearing I have ever heard. Certainly the joy
of conflict was not ours that day ... I only remember that as we
rose and started all the fire that had been held back so long
was loosed. In a second the air was full of the hiss of bullets and
the hurtle of grape-shot ... The whole landscape for an instant
turned slightly red.
”
PRIVATE DAVID L. THOMPSON, 9 NEW YORK VOLUNTEERS, IN AN ARTICLE FOR THE
CENTURY MAGAZINE, 1887. THOMPSON WAS CAPTURED AFTER THE BATTLE AND
TAKEN TO PRISON CAMP IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, BUT WAS SOON PAROLED IN A
PRISONER EXCHANGE
Advancing across the bridge
Here Burnside’s troops have finally made it across the
bridge and are ready to attack. It had taken them three
hours to cross the creek in the face of accurate enemy
fire. This costly delay was one of the reasons the Union
army failed to defeat the much smaller Confederate force.
EYEWITNESS September 17, 1862