I was confined to my bed five years. When I was wounded the doctors said there was no help for me, and it was several days before they dressed my wounds. I had a strong constitution and Yankee grit.” (National Tribune, May 27, 1886.) Yankee grit. And a New Englander’s gift for understatement.
This image from long after the war was used by the Committee on Invalid Pensions as part of a bill in the House of Representatives to increase Maynard’s pension. (Retouching in red emphasized the scars and sores.) The committee declared, “The evidence in this case discloses that the man has suffered terribly … Large burrowing abscesses frequently form upon the chest.” (Report of the Committee on Invalid Pensions, to whom was referred the bill [H.R. 3478] to increase the pension of Alonzo Maynard.) Despite his wounds, Alonzo Maynard married, had a son, and lived for more than four decades after the Battle of Antietam.
Hours later, other units were able to secure the bridge, and Union troops finally crossed the Antietam to attack the Rebels. While the battle ignited on the west side of the creek, the men of the 11th searched for their wounded friends, and began to bury their dead.
8TH CONNECTICUT REGIMENT
The men fought like Tigeres.
While the 11th Regiment battled it out at the bridge, the other units in their brigade—the 8th Connecticut, 16th Connecticut, and 4th Rhode Island—were doing what soldiers always do: they were waiting.
“[W]e were in line ready for work before sunrise,” wrote a lieutenant in the 8th; “the shot & shell flew around us like fun but there was not much fun about it as we soon found out it struck in our ranks & took one file completely out killing both of the men composing that file & a Sergeant of another Company who was in the rear & badly wounding another.”37
The fallen sergeant was a Hartford silversmith named George Marsh. “He was ill, but determined to be at his post,” wrote a comrade, “and there he died.”38
Once the enemy battery had the range on them, the Union soldiers were sitting ducks. The shells “came thick & fast but … there was no reply from our side we wondered at this thus it went on they using their artillery on us continually … Yet not a man in regit. stirred excepting ambulance corps who attended to wounded.”39
The 8th’s colonel, Edward Harland, who was commanding the brigade, directed the troops to move to a safer position. As the three regiments moved off, the Rebel artillery again tried to find their range. “[O]ur men would instinctively stoop and hesitate when the shells burst around them,” said Jacob Eaton. “Our Chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Morris, … passed up and down the lines, exclaiming after each explosion, ‘Never mind, boys! Come on; no one is hurt.’”40
“The Charge across the Burnside Bridge, Antietam,” drawn by Edwin Forbes.
Finally the troops reached comparative safety. To the north, Rebel fire made the stone bridge still impassable. How would Burnside get his troops to the other side of the creek? Colonel Harland sent two companies south to search for a place to ford Antietam Creek. Leading them was a trusted officer, Captain Charles Upham of the 8th Connecticut.
Six months before Antietam, Charlie Upham had taken a bullet in the shoulder in the Battle of Newbern, North Carolina. The wound never healed, but he refused to let it stop him. Now Upham, twenty-three, led his own company and another down the steep banks of the winding Antietam Creek, until they found a fording place.
The troops would face a sharp, slippery ascent up the far banks. While a Union battery, supported by the 8th Connecticut, distracted the Rebel artillery on the other side, Harland began to send his troops splashing across Antietam Creek. It was about one in the afternoon. A mile or so north of them, Union soldiers finally broke through Rebel fire to cross the stone bridge. Burnside’s troops, by bridge and by ford, were across; now they could come together for a united attack on the rebels.
An eighteen-year-old sergeant in the 8th Connecticut, Forrest Spofford was wounded in the left arm at Antietam. After a surgeon amputated, Spofford returned to his regiment, serving another two years. Later in the war, Spofford suffered a battle wound to his other arm, but again survived. After the war, he would serve as a one-armed librarian in Norwich.
But troops to the north needed ammunition, and each brigade had to move into position. The Georgian infantry regiments that had defended the bridge continued to harass the Union troops. Confederate artillery shelled Harland’s brigade again, but “We lay down & let them work,” remembered Wolcott Marsh.41
Finally, at about four o’clock, the order came to advance on the enemy. The delay would prove devastating.
The hiatus had allowed the Confederates to bring up forces from other parts of the battlefield, and re-form their lines in anticipation of Burnside’s attack. It also brought the arrival of over 2,000 Rebel soldiers under A. P. Hill. That humid day Hill’s men had rapidly marched the seventeen miles from Harper’s Ferry, many falling out from exhaustion. Now those who remained came down the road at the double-quick, just in time to turn the tide for the South.
The 1st Brigade of the Union’s 9th Corps advanced up the hill into a barrage of artillery and musketry, and then Colonel Harland ordered his own brigade forward. At the head of the 8th Regiment was Lt. Col. Hiram Appelman.
Col. Appelman led the Eighth forward in steady step up the hill. Nearly the whole corps was now charging, and the advancing line stretched far away to the right. As they reached the crest, the rebel troops were but a few rods in front. The Union line halted, and poured in a telling volley, and again leaped forward; and the enemy broke and fled, halting and firing as they could. A storm of shot, shell, and musketry, was sweeping through the ranks of the Eighth, now on the extreme Union left …
Steadily forward moves the line, now marking every yard of advance with blood of fallen men. The rebels still fall back. The 1st Brigade wavers, and slowly retires in disorder. Wilcox’s division, too, is giving way farther to the right. Forward presses the Eighth, until the men can see the road whereby Lee must retreat. “The position is ours” they shout; and a “Hurrah” goes down the line.
But already many have observed an immense force moving straight up on the left flank. “Re-inforcements,” say some: but Gen. Harland knows better; and he rides rapidly to the rear to hurry forward regiments to meet this new rebel move … The Eighth is now alone clinging to the crest. Three batteries are turned on them, and the enemy’s infantry close in around …
Eleazur Ripley, a sailor from Windham, had joined the Union army days after the war began. Returning home after Bull Run, Ripley immediately reenlisted, joining the 8th Connecticut in which he quickly rose to be captain. At Antietam, Ripley’s regiment held an advanced position where Confederate artillery raked their ranks. As A. P. Hill’s Rebel infantry charged on their flank, the soldiers of the 8th Connecticut were decimated. Captain Ripley, his left arm shattered, stood among his men, refusing to leave the field until the 8th was ordered to withdraw. After undergoing an amputation, Ripley continued to serve, transferring into the Veterans Reserve Corps. Following the war, Ripley worked as a clerk in the Pension Bureau, serving his fellow veterans.
No re-inforcements come. Twenty men are falling every minute. Col. Appelman is borne to the rear. John McCall falls bleeding. Eaton totters, wounded, down the hill. Wait, bullet-riddled,
