7:00- Dunkard Church- outskirts of Sharpsburg, Md- September 17, 1862.
The battle had been raging for 1 full hour. Robert E. Lee, mounted on Traveller, surveyed his army through the spyglass. He'd have to put them down soon, his arms hurt from the accident he had had. It was right after Manassas, he was riding through the lines, and had dismounted. Men began to holler that Yankee cavalry had come, he had reached for Traveller but the horse reared, and Lee had fallen, breaking one and spraining the other hand. They both still hurt, quite a bit.
He looked to the North, towards the West Woods and the Cornfield. In the woods, he could see a thin line of ragged men, some without proper clothing and footwear. Some without food. But they had stayed there; the long line of still forms on the ground attested to that. Before the Cornfield he counted no less than 13 battle flags in front of the field. Tattered squares of cloth over tattered forms of men. There, too, was a long still line of ragged butternut forms. Over to the East, he could still see the flash and smoke of fighting. Something there was going on. All his brigades hadn't even been engaged yet.
He turned to a staff officer, and pointed towards the smoky woods. "Ride there," said he, "and tell the first officer you meet, to flank those people." The man, he was a boy, really, put the spurs to his horse and moved away. He turned to another staff officer. "You, sir, will ride to the rear. I want you to report to me the situation on General Longstreet's front. I want you to tell him to send any battery he can spare." The man rode off. Lee turned back to his front. This battle had been going for just over an hour. He could tell this would be a long day.
James Alexander DuChesne of the 7th Louisiana Infantry was hungry. He was sleepy. He was wet. He was scared.
This had been his first battle. He had enlisted back in July and didn't make it to the Army until sometime in early September. The 7th was a skeleton of it's former self, averaging about 100 men. There had been 550 or so in the whole brigade that morning when the greasy Texan had come riding across the front of the brigade and screamed that the Yankees had taken the wood and were flanking his boys.
All DuChesne had after walking from Lousiana to Virginia was his old rubber blanket and his rifle. His pants had given out after Chantilly and his shirt was down to its last threads. But he shook off the dew, loaded the rifle, and stepped off with the others.
They could hear the shooting. And then, as they stepped through a portion of the woods, they could see it. A long line of Yankees, in regulation frock coats and black hats, were busy firing down the lines of the Texans contending with the enemy to their front. To DuChesne, the men had looked like robots with smoky heads, firing and firing, but never dying.
That had all changed when Henry Strong leaped out in front of the 6th and told them to "Give the blades to the sons of bitches!" The whole brigade had leaped forward, and before DuChesne knew it he had gone with them, and he could hear the yelling, like a pack of wild Grecian beasts on the loose, and then he realized he had been hollering with them, and then they hit the blue line and it dissolved.
He remembered the small Yankee, like a tree, but Jesus!could he move. He went straight through the Louisiana line and thrust his bayonet into a man, pulled it out, reversed, swung with the butt. A man took his throat out with a great knife, at the same time he thrust into his killer's body. They fell together. DuChesne had shot a Yankee. The man had calmly loaded his rifle in the melee, and was looking for someone to kill. He sighted down the front sight, when DuChesne saw him and pulled trigger. The ball made a noise like a rock smashing a watermelon, and down went the Yankee. He shook, and shook, and shook. That was the first time he had killed another human being.
The Louisianans had driven the Wisconsinites out of the line, taken back the ground held by the Texans and more. Now DuChesne had gone back to his dead Yankee. The man was short, and squat. His face was pockmarked, and sunken in. The ball from the Belgian rifle had taken him right under his heart, and he had bled to death very quickly. The man's Springfield, in fine condition, lay underneath his corpse. He rolled them man over to get the rifle and all of a sudden his hands felt enmeshed in meat. The back of the Yankee was one great big blob of gore and torn tissue. And, deep inside of his body, DuChesne saw his glistening heart. It moved.
DuChesne let the rifle go and ran like a deer, right back through the Louisiana brigade's line and didn't stop until he reached the Dunkard church. He'd had enough war for a lifetime.
Van Kidd was from Fayetteville Georgia, and a member of the 60th Georgia Infantry Regiment. He had been fighting since sunup, him and his 6 privates. They had been at the edge of the cornfield, in a rock stand, when the Yankees first attacked. Now they were down to their last rounds of ammunition. Kidd was going to get some.
When the firing slowed, he darted from his rock and began to run. He traveled so light, he had nothing to divest himself of. He headed towards the lines of his Georgia brigade.
The panorama of war devastated him. Almost half his brigade was down. About 40 percent of Ripley's Georgians and North Carolinians, and 20% of Law's Georgians and Mississippians were down, but they had held the line, against a whole corps. Bodies littered the fields, the long gray lines of butternut and gray, and, out farther, the pile upon pile of writhing, blue men. And the smoke. It got in the hair, in the clothes, everywhere. No one had any ammunition. It was low everywhere.
Just then a Regiment of Yankees burst from cover and advanced towards the middle of the field. The ragged, hard men, fell into line in any position, capping and cocking their rifles. Kidd joined them, fired in the general volley, watched the Yankees go back. Kidd dashed into the field and began to saw desperately at the shot Yankees with his bayonet. Cartridge boxes collected, he headed back towards the rock pile.
The Yankees, who with two full brigades, those of Christian and Abram Duryea, were trying to push through the East Woods. Everytime they would advance, a searing blast of riflery would send them back. Unbeknownst to them, two regiments were holding them up. Half a division being stopped by half a brigade.
The 3rd North Carolina Infantry started the battle with 547 men. Nathaniel Hartsuff and his company F had a strength of 63. 'Big Nate' Hartsuff looked at the legions of Yankees and wondered if the regiment would be able to drive them out.
Coming on the flank of Ripley's attack, Hartsuff and the 3rd had gone in by the oblique through two artillery batteries and had come up on the flank of the men attacking in the cornfield. The 3rd volleyed. The Yankees volleyed back. The 3rd's volleys pushed them back. Hartsuff and the rest of the 3rd advanced to their right front now. The fight was more of a street fight than a proper battle. The Carolinians took to the trees, firing, ducking, moving, firing, but always advancing. Hartsuff picked up a wounded man's rifle and fought like an enlisted man. The volleys came, men fell, but the Stars and Bars fell onwards.
The company was shrinking. First Sergeant Ethan Fortlow of Gordonsville was next to him in the line. "Hey, Big Nate," he hollered over the fire, "them Yanks are killing us!" He took a ball right through his open mouth, teeth and tongue mangled. Taking off his cartridge box and flinging down his rifle, he cried, "Boys, I'm gone. Get a Yank or two for old Ete!" then hobbled off through the undergrowth. Hartsuff would see him again in '66, a dentist in Wilmington, with as fine a set of wooden teeth as ever crafted.
The Carolinians were almost to the fringe of the woods. My God, thought Hartsuff, they had done it, they had driven the Yankees through the whole woods. A volley hit them in the flank. Men toppled like tenpins. The 3rd turned, exchanged volleys. Hartsuff could see the Blues wavering. Dashing out in front, he waved his rifle in his hand and cried "Boys, follow Big Nate and see if we can't drive them from there!" The 3rd followed. The 3rd drove. Hartsuff crashed to the ground in their final volley. He'd die an old man with one leg.
The 6th North Carolina Infantry were veterans. 330 hard men marched into those woods, and leading them was Robert Webb. Right now Webb was lost. Law's brigade had been fragmented in between the Cornfield and East Woods and Webb had no idea which way to go. So he marched to the sound of the guns. Deeper and deeper into the woods the 6th went. Webb dispatched the smallest company, 22 men under a lieutenant, as skirmishers, and it was now as they came back that Webb knew the Yankees had arrived.
The regiment's position was somewhat commanding. It was a small rise in the ground, in a clearing, and it sloped into woods on the right flank and into a deep ditch on the left flank. The men spread out in open order, covering that entire area. Webb passed the order, "No one is to fire a shot, until the word is given!" He drew his pistol. And the wait began.
He didn't have very long to wait. He could hear the Yankees marching, tin cups clinking on canteens, men thrashing in bushes. A man from Company H on the far flank came running and gasping to say that "Legions of Yankees were marching by the right flank!" Webb dashed to see, and it was true. He could hear volleys in his rear too, evidence of deadly fighting. These oncoming Yankees came on to 60 yards range before nature took over and the men fired on their own. The Yankees recoiled, then fired on their own in response. And the conflict began.
It was William Christian's brigade, and aforementioned man galloped around and wondered why his brigade would not advance. They were in column of regiment, one behind the other, and the lead regiment, the 26th New York, had it out with Webb and his Carolinians. It was shoot, shoot, gasp, reload, shoot, extend the line, contract the line, but always fire. Men fell, the line shrank in, but never did the fire stop. A regiment holding a brigade. Shoot, shoot, rummage through the dead, fire some more. See men fall. Fire from the front. Yankees came up to 20 yards on the left flank before a deadly charge from Kevin Shea and company B in the ditch drove them away. The regiment fought, contracted, and died.
About 30 minutes into the firefight, Webb was hit. He had seized an enlisted man's rifle and was firing at a Yankee color guard. The ball tore through the rifle, through his lower arm, and into the ground. His arm went numb. His men must not see. He wrapped his arm with his officer's sash. He hoped it did not have to come off. At that time, an officer came to the fighting regiment. He said he was from the 13th Alabama and that General Colquitt's brigade was coming into line in their rear so they could fall back. Webb and the 6th went back, firing, face to the enemy. They left 40% of their men in those trees.
Men in butternut and gray collected, gathered ammunition, tended to wounds, rolled cannon up to the firing line. Those Yankees weren't done, not by a long shot..they'd come back. All the men could do was wait.
