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"How did you stand that fighting yesterday afternoon, George?" Dick asked of Warner. "First rate. The open air agreed with me, and as no bullet sought me out I felt benefited. I didn't get away from that hospital too soon. How far away is this Antietam River, behind which they say Lee lies?"
He looked now at the many and formidable Federal batteries clustered like dark fruit above the Antietam, and now at the masses of blue infantry, and now at the positions, under artillery and musketry fire, which the Confederate batteries must take. He put the glass down again. "Yes, general. Where shall I get the fifty guns?" "How many have you?" "I had thirty. Some were lost, a number disabled.
It happened so often that the whole land moaned with the horror of it there was Bull Run and then again Bull Run, and there was the long Peninsula Campaign an entire year of futility and failure; and there was the ghastly slaughter of Fredericksburg, and the blind confusion of Chancellorsville, and the bitter, disappointment of Antietam.
The numbers were not so great as at Antietam, but it seemed to him that within the contracted area of Perryville the fight was even more fierce and deadly than it had been on that famous Maryland field. But he was conscious of one thing. They were being borne back. Tears of rage ran down his face. Was it always to be this way? Were their numbers never to be of any avail?
A message came from Longstreet. "Burnside is in motion. I've got D. R. Jones and twenty-five hundred men." It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thousand men he came over the stone bridge across the Antietam. They were fresh troops; their flags were flying, their drums were beating, their bugles braying. The line moved with huzzahs toward the ridge held by Longstreet.
Hence, Antietam, Gettysburg, and all the other battles that had been fought, were by them set down as failures on our part, and victories for them. Their army believed this. It produced a morale which could only be overcome by desperate and continuous hard fighting.
"I take it that we're not here to keep out of his way, and, if our brethren are pounding now, oughtn't we to go in and help them pound? Remember how we divided our strength at Antietam." Dick shrugged his shoulders. His feelings were too bitter for him to make a reply save to say: "I don't know anything about it." Meanwhile the distant combat roared and deepened.
At Antietam he led his men repeatedly against the rebels, and was as often forced back, until the ground over which his division had fought was covered with dead. He was thrice wounded, but refused to be carried from the field until faintness from loss of blood obliged him to relinquish his command.
All these hopes were reversed by McClellan's rapid march and prompt attack. In the hours of a single autumn day, on the banks of the Antietam, the triumphant advance of the Confederates was checked and defeated. And, if the further fact be considered that the adversary thus checkmated was Lee, the military ability of General McClellan must be conceded.
But the thunders of Antietam were reverberating through that mountainous region, distinctly heard in all their many echoes, and of course the all-absorbing topic. At 3 P. M. orders came to move a short distance beyond Frederick.
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