…Carolina's Second Assault at Antietam
"Ezra Ayers Carman, who commanded the 13th New Jersey at Antietam, wrote a seminal work on the Maryland Campaign based upon correspondences with veterans during the 1890s and 1900s. It is a magisterial work and highly recommended. Nevertheless, some details deserve reexamination.
The 2nd South Carolina Infantry made two assaults near the Dunker Church at the Battle of Antietam. This essay explores the 2nd South Carolina's second assault, occurring at approximately 9:30 a.m., from three perspectives: the 2nd South Carolina, which attacked from the West Woods; Lieutenant George Augustus Woodruff's Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery, which was posted just south of the D. R. Miller Cornfield; and Lieutenant Colonel Hector Tyndale's Federal brigade, defending the north end of a low plateau across the Hagerstown Pike from the Dunker Church. The result of this reassessment is an updated interpretation of each of these units' fighting.
After roughly three hours of battle, the Confederate left faced imminent collapse. Three divisions under Maj. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson had fought themselves out against the Union I Corps, with only one fresh Confederate brigade in reserve. Three brigades of Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill's division shifted left from the Confederate center. The small Union XII Corps fought and soundly defeated these brigades. In doing so, it permanently cleared the East Woods and the Miller Cornfield. Two brigades of Brig. Gen. George Sears Greene's division then created a lodgment, temporarily without ammunition, on the ridge east of the West Woods and the Dunker Church. Meanwhile, a green regiment from Brig. Gen. Samuel Wylie Crawford's brigade, the 125th Pennsylvania, advanced without support into the West Woods and just beyond the Dunker Church. Other Federal units from the morning's fighting were scattered around the edges of the West Woods. Most soon cleared the way for a fresh veteran Federal division that drove west across the Hagerstown Turnpike and into the West Woods, which until moments before held little more than a single Confederate brigade…"
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Amicalement
Armand
prepares to do some regimental-level ACW gaming.