lay close to the ground the shell & cannon balls flying all around us often wounding and killing some one. These missels as they fly near us have a most hateful spiteful sing to them. They sound as if they meant evil.”23
Robert Hubbard
The 14th Connecticut passed through William Roulette’s farm twice. To farmers like Robert Hubbard, the bucolic surroundings would have held a sense of familiarity, but the screaming shells, smoke, and corpses of soldiers and horses transformed the tranquil farm scene into something horrific. The farmhouse became a bloody field hospital where surgeons cut and bandaged. Later, hundreds of bodies were buried on the Roulette grounds.
Flattened into the dirt, the 14th men waited for their next orders. Then above the shriek of the shells came an officer’s voice: they were moving. As the men rose from the field, “a rifle in Co. B was accidentally discharged, and we saw one of our members, one of the best men in the company, Robert Hubbard lying upon the ground writhing in the agony of a mortal wound.”24
Their captain directed some of his men to carry Robert to the rear. Hubbard died while the battle continued. His friends buried him beside the corncrib on Roulette’s farm.
On the day the 14th Regiment left Connecticut for the South, Hubbard had written to his mother, “If I should never return, my short life may have been of greater service to my family, my country and the cause of freedom than a life spent at home devoted to self.”25 In December of 1862, Robert’s sister wrote to William Roulette, who owned the farm where her brother was buried. The Maryland farmer had a coffin made for the Connecticut farmer, and sent Robert’s remains north. In a graveyard near their farm, the Hubbards laid him to rest.
Robert’s brother Josiah would survive the war and return to the farm in Middletown. Here, five years after the Battle of Antietam, Josiah’s first son, Robert, would be born.
***
DAY’S END
It was a baffling afternoon for the men of the 14th Connecticut: they seemed to be marching all around the battlefield—shells exploding everywhere, bullets whizzing by—yet their own guns were quiet. Leaving the battery they’d been sent to guard, the Nutmeggers took up a new position, when the order came once again to lie down: “the enemy had seen us and at once commenced shelling us. It was very trying to have to lie inactive under fire and listen to the hideous howling of the shell varied only by their crash in exploding and occasionally the shriek of some one who was struck. I lay closer to the ground than ever before in my life, although it was a plowed field and an exceedingly dirty place, and I never prayed more fervently for darkness than then.”26
Nightfall brought a blessed end to the shelling. “As most of us threw away our Coats & Blankets which were in the way when we first entered the fight we are now without any covering & are compelled to sleep on the damp cold ground,” wrote Fred Hawley. He seemed unable to take in the enormity of what he had just passed through. “We feel very tired & hungry having ate nothing since morning & many threw away their Haversacks so Hard tack is scarce.” Exhausted, scared, and hungry, the boys of the 14th lay down on the ground to sleep.27
Sleep didn’t come easily. Henry Stevens, the 14th’s chaplain, wrote: “All that night through and the following day and night they heard the dreadful groans and cries of the wounded and dying wretches in Bloody Lane just over the hill calling for water or help, or to have taken off others who, dead, were lying across or upon their tortured and helpless bodies, or for death to release them from their anguish … but they were powerless to render the assistance their hearts longed to give.”28
George E. Stannard was the youngest child of widow Roxanna Stannard of Clinton. He was about twenty-three when he wrote this letter to his mother:29
Keatyville MD September 20, 1862
Dear Mother
I take great pleasure in writing to you once more we have had a battle and a hard one but I am all right but our rgmt was badly cut up we formed a line of battle and charged through the corn on double quick the boys behaved like heros
a good many of our boys went down Pendleton was shot through the breast and arm Luit. Sherman in the arm John Parks through the leg he will die John Hurd in the arm twice George Doane in the knee Lewellin Dibble in the foot and a good many more not so bad and after we came out of the corn we were marched up through a narrow lane onto a hill between 2 cross fires and there our loved capt [Samuel Willard] fell with a shot through the brain he never spoke his body was sent home today Horace Stevens is missing but I think he is dead for the men that buried the dead in that part of the field say that they buried one of Co. G’s men and he is the only one not accounted for I don’t know how many men our rgmt lost altogether but it was enough
after the capt was killed we charged across the hill to the left and were ordered to report to Col Brooks and he ordered us to support the left wing we drove across the field amid such a storm of shot and shell, grape and canister and rifle balls as I never want to see again we marched on to the left of the Irish Brigade they received us with such cheers and yells as only an Irishman can give they told us afterwards that they thought we were the regulars we came up in such style
after we had succeded in turning the devils we had a very easy time most too much so we were ordered to lie down flat on our faces and not move and we did not feel much inclinde to move I tell you for the shell from thier baterrys were flying all around us … after a minute a Liut was lying about ten feet from me and he stuck up his head to speak to his Capt and a shell came along and took the top of his head off I went to him and three of his Co helped carry him off the field as we were getting over a fence a round shot came and saved us the trouble for it knocked it all down
just as we got back an orderly came along and said that Gen Richardson was killed Gen Morris sung out who will go and bring him off and four of us started and it was a race but we got him he was not dead but badly wounded in the breast we carried him to the hospital
after that we laid 36 hours on the plowed ground behind a little knoll but that night after the battle I never shall forget the groans and sreiks of the wounded curces and shell mixed up promiscous it was awful I can assure you but I cant write any more for we are going to move some where I am all right only hit once and that was with a spent ball in the leg it stung a little
GES
The battle’s final stage would begin at the southern end of the battlefield with the command of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. Among the roughly 8,500 Union soldiers in Burnside’s 9th Corps were three Connecticut regiments: the 8th, 11th, and 16th Connecticut Volunteers.
11TH CONNECTICUT REGIMENT
I can speak of time no more.30
That morning, General Burnside separated the 11th Connecticut from the rest of the 9th Corps. Burnside was friendly with the 11th’s colonel, twenty-five-year-old Henry Walter Kingsbury; years earlier, he had been young Kingsbury’s guardian. So when McClellan ordered Burnside to send his troops across Antietam Creek to attack Lee’s right flank, Burnside turned to Kingsbury to help him gain control of a stone bridge spanning the stream. Across this bridge, just twelve feet wide, Burnside intended to march his troops—but
