The attack was so sudden and fierce that Burnside’s entire division reeled back. Here, as in the north, the face of the battle had been changed in an instant. Not only could Colonel Winchester mourn over those lost two days, but he could mourn over every lost half hour in them. Had Hill come a half hour later Lee’s whole center would have been swept away.
Lee and his great lieutenants, Jackson and Longstreet, were still confident. Despite the disparity in numbers they had beaten back every attack.
A. P. Hill was a man who corresponded in fire and impetuosity to Hooker. The number of his veterans was not so great, but their rush was so fierce, and they struck at such a critical time that the Northern brigades were unable to hold the ground they had gained. More troops from the dying battle on the north came to Lee’s aid, and every attempt of McClellan to take Sharpsburg failed.
Dick, fighting with his comrades on the north, knew little of what was passing on the peninsula in the south, but he became conscious after a while that the appalling fury of the battle around him was diminishing. He had not seen such a desperate hand-to-hand battle at either Shiloh or the Second Manassas, and they were terrible enough. But he felt as the Confederates themselves had felt, that the Southern army was fighting for existence.
But as the day waned, Dick believed that they would never be able to crush Jackson. The Union troops always returned to the attack, but the men in gray never failed to meet it, and actual physical exhaustion overwhelmed the combatants. Pennington went down, and Dick dragged him to his feet, fearing that he was wounded mortally, but found that his comrade had merely dropped through weakness.
The long day of heat and strife neared its close. Neither Northern tenacity nor Southern fire could win, and the sun began to droop over the field piled so thickly with bodies. As the twilight crept up the battle sank in all parts of the peninsula. McClellan, who had lost those two most precious days, and who had finally failed to make use of all his numbers at the same time, now, great in preparation, as usual, made ready for the emergency of the morrow.
All the powerful and improved artillery which McClellan had in such abundance was brought up. The mathematical minds and the workshops of the North bore full fruit upon this sanguinary field of Antietam. The shattered divisions of Hooker, with which Dick and his comrades lay, were sheltered behind a great line of artillery. No less than thirty rifled guns of the latest and finest make were massed in one battery to command the road by which the South might attack.
To the south the Northern artillery was equally strong, and beyond the Antietam also it was massed in battery after battery to protect its men.
But the coming twilight found both sides too exhausted to move. The sun was setting upon the fiercest single day’s fighting ever seen in America. Nearly twenty-five thousand dead or wounded lay upon the field. More than one fourth of the Southern army was killed or wounded, yet it was in Lee’s mind to attack on the morrow.
After night had come the weary Southern generals-those left alive- reported to Lee as he sat on his horse in the road. The shadows gathered on his face, as they told of their awful losses, and of the long list of high officers killed or wounded. Jackson was among the last, and he was gloomy. The man who had always insisted upon battle did not insist upon it now. Hood reported that his Texans, who had fought so valiantly for the Dunkard church, were almost destroyed.
The scene in the darkness with the awful battlefield around them was one which not even the greatest of painters could have reproduced. When the last general had told his tale of slaughter and destruction, they sat for a while in silence. They realized the smallness of their army, and the immense extent of their losses. The light wind that had sprung up swept over the dead faces of thousands of the bravest men in the Southern army. They had held their ground, but on the morrow McClellan could bring into line three to one and an artillery far superior alike in quality, weight and numbers to theirs.