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Updated: June 27, 2025
Cornfield and wood lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still. Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him. "General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the fields of the world had given tribute.
The Southerners in front who had been driven back returned, and as Stuart and Hill continued to beat hard upon their flanks, the troops of Hooker were compelled to retreat. Once more the white church faded in the mists and smoke. But Hooker and his generals rallied their men and advanced anew. The ground around the Dunkard church became one of the most sanguinary places in all America.
Greene, at the same moment, moved upon the Dunkard Church, and Early, who with the fragments of Jones' division was alone within the wood, marched rapidly in the same direction. Attacked suddenly in flank from behind a ridge of rock Greene's regiments were driven back; and then Early, observing Sedgwick's third line pushing across the turnpike, reformed his troops for further action.
The mist rose, the morning advanced. The September sunshine lay like vital warmth upon the height and vale, upon the Dunkard church and the wood about it, upon the cornfields, and Burnside's bridge and the Bloody Lane, and upon all the dead men in the cornfields, in the woods, upon the heights, beside the stream, in the lane.
D.H. Hill on the right, though part of his force had given way, still held the Roulette House and the sunken road, and the troops in the West Wood were well protected from the Northern batteries. The one weak point was the gap occupied by Greene's Federals, which lay between Grigsby's regiments in the northern angle of the West Wood and Hood's division at the Dunkard Church.
Lee met it with a narrow grey sea not thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two colours. There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods. It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left.
All saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance of his chief of staff. "Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob." The Dunkard church!
In the space between the woods were several small farms, surrounded by orchards and stone fences; and on the slope east of the Dunkard Church stood a few cottages and barns. Access to the position was not easy. Only a single ford, near Snaveley's house, exists across the Antietam, and this was commanded by the bluff on the Confederate right.
West of the Hagerstown turnpike, and covering the ground as far as the Nicodemus Farm, was Jones' division; the Stonewall and Jones' brigades in front, Taliaferro's and Starke's along the edge of the wood in rear. Hood, in third line, stood near the Dunkard Church; and on Hood's right were three of Longstreet's batteries under Colonel Stephen Lee.
Stonewall Jackson, returning to the Dunkard church and passing behind this headland, turned Little Sorrel's head and came upon the plateau. Pelham met him. "Yes, general, we're doing well. Yes, sir, it's holding out. Caissons were partly filled during the lull." "Good, good!" said Jackson. He dismounted and walked forward to the guns. Pelham followed.
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