been gathering his Union troops on the east side of the creek.
The day before the battle, McClellan sent some 8,600 Union soldiers across the creek with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, who maneuvered them to the north of Stonewall Jackson’s position. That night in the rain more Union troops, under Gen. J. K. F. Mansfield, followed Hooker across the creek.
At dawn, Union artillery opened on the Rebels, slicing into Stonewall Jackson’s forces. “Fighting Joe” Hooker marched his infantry south toward the Confederate line, pulling up before a great cornfield from which bayonets protruded. Union artillery raked the field, and Hooker reported: “In the time I am writing every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their ranks a few moments before.”4
The blue-coated infantry moved forward again, pushing Jackson’s Rebels back. Lee hustled reinforcements forward, and a little after seven o’clock, Hooker called for support. General Mansfield, waiting in the rear with his 12th Corps, swiftly advanced to reinforce the wavering Union forces.
The white-bearded Mansfield, fifty-eight, projected an air of alertness and experience to the roughly 8,000 men he commanded. Fifteen years earlier, in the Mexican War, Mansfield had been severely wounded and brevetted three separate times for his actions in battle. One of his Mexican War subordinates, John Pope, said that Mansfield “pervaded all places of danger, and everywhere put himself in the forefront of the battle … I never yet have seen a man so regardless of his personal safety or so eager to imperil it.”5
Antietam, Sharpsburg and Vicinity Constructed and Engraved to Illustrate “The War with the South,” by Charles Sholl, 1864.
A native of Middletown, Gen. Joseph K. F. Mansfield had served in the army since age eighteen, when he had graduated from West Point. At the outset of the war, Mansfield had capably protected the capital as commander of the Department of Washington—but he yearned for a field command. In September of 1862, Mansfield got his wish, taking charge of the Union army’s 12th Corps. “Although he appeared like a calm and dignified old gentleman when he took command of the corps two days before,” said one of his men, “he was the personification of vigor, dash and enthusiasm” in battle. (John Mead Gould, Joseph K. F. Mansfield, Brigadier General of the U.S. Army, A Narrative of Events Connected with His Mortal Wounding at Antietam, Sharpsburg, Maryland, September 17, 1862, p. 29.)
Today was no different. “The General was moving around the field continually,” wrote one of his men. “He seemed to be everywhere.”6 Mansfield rode rapidly back and forth, positioning his troops, then watching from the high ground the overall movement of the battle.
One of his regiments, the 10th Maine, was now firing into a wooded area where Confederates were using trees and woodpiles as cover. Mansfield had received a report that Hooker’s troops held the woods; when he saw the 10th Maine loading and firing,
Mansfield at once came galloping down the hill and passed through the scattered men of the right companies, shouting “Cease firing, you are firing into our own men!” He rode very rapidly …
Captain Jordan now ran forward … and insisted that Gen. Mansfield should “Look and see.” He and Sergt. Burnham pointed out particular men of the enemy, who were not 50 yards away, that were then aiming their rifles at us and at him … he was convinced, and remarked, “Yes, you are right.”7
Mansfield had ridden into “a most perilous position—where the bullets and missiles were flying like hail, and where no one upon a horse could survive. It seemed as if the very depths of Pandemonia had sent her furies,” wrote Surgeon P. H. Flood of the 107th New York.8 A conspicuous target, the general immediately drew the fire of Confederates in the woods before him. One of the 10th Maine soldiers watched as his commander moved off: “He then turned his horse and … attempted to go through [a broken fence], but the horse, which … appeared to be wounded, refused to step into the traplike mass of rails and rubbish, or to jump over. The General thereupon promptly dismounted and led the horse … as he dismounted his coat blew open, and I saw that blood was streaming down the right side of his vest.”9 A minié ball had pierced Mansfield’s lung. As blood soaked his chest, soldiers slung him in a blanket and carried him to the rear. He would die the following morning.
While General Mansfield was borne to the rear, the fight continued to rage back and forth, with first the Federal, then the Confederate forces dominating. Both sides suffered appalling casualties. By nine in the morning, a lull had set in at the northern end of the battlefield, while the battle had ignited farther south.
Just before he left Washington to join McClellan’s command, General Mansfield wrote a hurried note to his twenty-two-year-old son Sam, who had just graduated from West Point. “You must purchase a horse … fill your pockets with sandwiches and follow me.” (Letter from J. K. F. Mansfield to Samuel M. Mansfield, September 12, 1862; courtesy of the Middlesex County Historical Society.) Arriving in Maryland after the battle, Sam found that instead of acting as his father’s aide, he was escorting the general’s coffin home to Middletown. The younger Mansfield went on to serve as colonel of Connecticut’s 24th Regiment.
THE 14TH CONNECTICUT
I never prayed more fervently for darkness.
About eight o’clock that morning, Cornwall native general John Sedgwick had forded Antietam Creek with about 5,500 troops. At the center of Sedgwick’s line marched the men of Connecticut’s 14th Regiment, who had left Hartford less than a month before. How green were they? Frederick Burr Hawley of Bridgeport wrote peevishly in his journal, “Immediately after crossing [Antietam Creek], we come into a ploughed lot, our feet being wet, get covered with mud, some gets in my shoes & chafes my feet.”10
Minutes later, Hawley and his 14th comrades had more than chafed feet to worry about. Sedgwick rapidly moved his forces toward the center of the battlefield, and into the East Woods.
The order was given to form line of battle, shells were bursting about them, tearing off huge branches of trees while shot were cutting the air with their sharp shriek.
This order to form line of battle was perhaps the supreme moment of their experience, as there shot through the minds of the men the thought of the loved ones at home; the terrible possibilities of the engagement made vivid by the ghastly scenes through which they had already passed at South Mountain; some indeed would be wounded, some slain outright; there must inevitably be suffering and death: and as they looked at the familiar faces of their comrades, they wondered who it would be.11
***
“These may be my last words,” Samuel Willard wrote to his wife; “if so, they are these: I have full faith in Jesus Christ, my Savior; I do not regret that I have fallen in defence of my country; I have loved you truly and know that you have loved me … If my body should ever reach home, let there be no ceremony; I ask no higher honor than to die for my country.” (Samuel Willard, as quoted in Samuel Irenaeus Prime, The Power of Prayer, pp. 408–11.)
“I
