Bombarding the Burnside Bridge

The 51st Pennsylvania's Lt. Col. Thomas Bell
fell mortally wounded from a Confederate artillery
round within 50 feet of the Burnside Bridge
(digitalcommonwealth.org)

Standing at the Burnside Bridge makes one feel cut off from the rest of the Antietam battlefield. Antietam presents great vistas that allow visitors to examine large swaths of the battlefield at once. Not so at the Burnside Bridge. There, after a long drive from the Bloody Lane on the auto tour, visitors stand and look into two hillsides, their visibility limited to just a few hundred yards. At the bridge, you are down in a deep swale that you can hardly see out of when you are in it and you can barely see into it unless you are standing on top of the hillsides that surround it.

Then how, in this secluded low point on the battlefield, do numerous Union accounts at the bridge mention coming under Confederate artillery fire? No Confederate guns were perched alongside Henry Benning’s Georgians overlooking the bridge and Antietam Creek. What is to account for these Federal tales of being struck by enemy artillery shells?

At least two mentions of this made their way into Ezra Carman’s chapter on the fighting at the Burnside Bridge. First, when relating the attack of Crook’s brigade, Carman mentions the left-wing of the 11th Ohio Infantry being exposed to a “severe fire of infantry and artillery.”[1] Later, after the 51st Pennsylvania and 51st New York carried the bridge, “Confederate guns on Cemetery hill threw their shell and shrapnel into the ranks of the [Federals] lying in the road near the bridge, killing and wounding many…”[2]

Christie, Cox, Crook, Confusion, and the Burnside Bridge

George Crook

Sometimes, going down rabbit holes of research will lead you to unexpected places. Occasionally, they lead nowhere. But every once in a while, you get rewarded. Hence, the case of Lt. Samuel L. Christie of Jacob Cox's staff during the Maryland Campaign.

It all started by reading George Crook's Autobiography. “About ten a.m.,” Crook remembered, “Capt. Christ on Gen. Cox' staff came to see me, and said, ‘The General wishes you to take the bridge.’ I asked him what bridge. He said he didn't know. I asked him where the stream was, but he didn't know. I made some remarks not complimentary to such a way of doing business, but he went off, not caring a cent. Probably he had done the correct thing.”[i] This story of miscommunication and poor intelligence has always astounded me. How could Crook, who had two companies of the 11th Ohio Infantry overlooking the Burnside Bridge since 7:00 a.m., not know where the bridge was located? And how could a staff officer of corps commander Jacob Cox not know the location of Antietam Creek or have an answer to Crook’s query? Attempting to answer these questions is beyond this post (if they are even answerable) but my affinity for staff officers in Civil War armies forced me to look into this Capt. Christ.

In his after-action report of the Battle of South Mountain, Cox personally thanks S. L. Christie and one other staff officer “for the devotion and courage displayed by them in the laborious and hazardous duties of the day.”[ii] Crook got the name wrong in his autobiography, but not by much. Thanks to some Googling and searching through various books in my library, I was able to find a Samuel L. Christie, born in 1837 and listed as a Captain of the 1st Kentucky Infantry.[iii] Fold3 has all Kentucky’s Compiled Service Records (CSR) digitized; I obtained more information about Christie here.

"Foolishing Brave": Lt. Col. William Holmes and the Defense of the Burnside Bridge

     As the sun was setting on the hills around Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 15, 1862, the roughly 400 men of the 2nd and 20th Georgia Infantry regiments took position on an imposing bluff approximately 50 feet above the Burnside Bridge. Immediately, the Georgians prepared their defensive positions, felling trees and piling fence rails to create a hasty breastwork. The 20th Georgia defended the western opening of the bridge itself and positions north of it. Lieutenant Colonel William R. Holmes' 2nd Georgia stretched the line south of the bridge along Antietam Creek.
     September 17, 1862, is the most documented day of William Holmes' forty-plus year life. The native Georgian was born in 1821 (his birthday is not known). In Burke County, he became a prominent physician before leading Co. D of the 2nd Georgia off to war in 1861. The men of the 2nd greatly respected Holmes and he received a promotion to be the regiment's lieutenant colonel in April 1862.(1) On August 30 at the Battle of Second Manassas, Holmes' leadership inspired his men and filled them with confidence in him.(2)
   

William Holmes' attempted to repel this Federal charge across Burnside Bridge with an attack of his own

   

As Circumstances Permitted: Capt. James Duane and his Reconnaissance of Antietam Creek's Crossings on September 16

     Antietam Creek provided a question that George B. McClellan needed to answer. In order to fight the Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, his army had to navigate across that stream. Doing so presented an issue for the Federals, as straddling a stream in the face of the enemy was a less than ideal situation, something the Union commander experienced in the Seven Days' Campaign. Few officers in the Army of the Potomac were better suited to finding reasonable places to cross the Antietam than Capt. James Duane.

Capt. James Chatham Duane (courtesy
of the United States Lighthouse Society)

     Since his graduation from West Point in 1848, Duane had served in the Corps of Engineers, both in the classroom and in the field. At Antietam, he commanded the Army of the Potomac's Regular Engineer Battalion and served on McClellan's staff.(1)
     The situation on the northern end of the Federal line did not present as much of an issue as the state of affairs in the sector of the Ninth Corps when it came to crossing the Antietam. There, Confederate forces positioned themselves overlooking the creek and a major bridge crossing (the Lower, or Burnside, Bridge). In fact, some of the Confederate skirmishers held a foothold on the creek's eastern bank, making any Federal reconnaissance surveying the approaches to the bridge or additional crossing points incredibly difficult. Despite those circumstances, McClellan looked to Duane and his engineers to survey the creek on the battlefield's southern end.

Close and Concentrated: 9th Corps Artillery Conquers the Burnside Bridge

     I had always thought of the fight for the Burnside Bridge as one of infantry. The 2nd and 20th Georgia stoutly defending the bridge and the charge of the 51st New York and 51st Pennsylvania dominate our interpretation of the action there. It was not until today while hiking the Burnside Bridge sector of the Antietam battlefield with my good friend and artillery guru Jim Rosebrock (check out his excellent blog here) that I realized how crucial of a role Ambrose Burnside's and Jacob Cox's artillery played in cracking the conundrum of how to get their men across Antietam Creek.
     The 9th Corps had 53 guns at Antietam, according to Curt Johnson's and Richard C. Anderson, Jr.'s book Artillery Hell. At various points of the fight for the Burnside Bridge, anywhere from 21 to 29 of those guns fired directly on the Confederate infantry defending the bridge or the nearby Confederate artillery that supported the infantry.

     As attack after attack against the bridge and its Confederate defenders failed, there is a marked effort on the part of Burnside, Cox, and 9th Corps artillery chief George Getty to use artillery to drive the enemy away from the banks of Antietam Creek. While the 9th Corps' position always allowed it to converge the fire of its artillery onto the Confederate defenders, as the day wore on, 9th Corps batteries began shrinking their ring of fire, ensnaring the Confederates and ultimately helping drive them away.