Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862

At 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 17, the men of the California Regiment were awakened for an inspection of cartridge boxes. An hour later, each man drew 40 cartridges to supplement the 40 he held in his cartridge box. They boys stuffed the extra ammunition into pockets and haversacks and tried to get some more sleep. But little sleep was to be had, for reveille sounded between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. Officers instructed the men to make coffee and to be ready to march in an hour. Soon the Californians heard the popping of picket fire from across the Antietam Creek. Between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., the small arms fire was drowned out by the booming of artillery that probably heralded the onset of General Joe Hooker’s advance from a woodlot, the North Woods, toward a small white church, the Dunker Church, about 1,500 yards due south.

Not long after dawn, Colonel Wistar’s approximately 510 men and officers were ordered to pile their knapsacks and wait for orders to move out. By this time, heavy exchanges of both small arms and artillery fire reverberated from across the Antietam. Brigades of the First Corps had pushed south and by about 7:00 a.m. had successfully driven Stonewall Jackson’s hard-bitten men toward the church and beyond. Just when it appeared that General Lee’s left flank was to be crushed, Brigadier General John Bell Hood’s brigades emerged from a stand of timber just behind and north of the Dunker Church, the West Woods, crossed the Hagerstown Turnpike. They reformed in the clover field between the turnpike and the Smoketown Road, and charged into farmer David Miller’s cornfield stopping the Union First Corps in its tracks. Fighting Joe dispatched an urgent call for help from General Mansfield’s Twelfth Corps which soon began to arrive on the field. The corps chief was mortally wounded as he deployed his men, and command devolved to Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams.

Meanwhile, a restless Edwin Sumner and his Second Corps troops sat in their camps near Keedysville waiting to be called. Finally, at 7:20 a.m., an order directing the corps commander to hurry his command across the Antietam Creek arrived at headquarters. General Oliver Howard’s troops of the Philadelphia Brigade, including the California Regiment, were immediately drawn up in a line and a number of men from each regiment were detached to guard the knapsacks. John Sedgwick’s roughly 5,400 men moved by the right flank (west) to the creek, followed about 20 minutes later by General French’s Third Division. The three brigades moved cross country in three parallel brigade columns, four men abreast, approximately 75 yards apart with Howard’s brigade on the right or north. The brigadier claimed that the four regiments marched "at a rate of at least three miles an hour."

Generals Sumner (left) and Sedgwick (right)

Sedgwick’s brigades hurried a short distance through wood stands and open fields before they descended into the Antietam Creek valley. The Philadelphia Brigade and the balance of the division headed to a ford perhaps 1,000 feet downstream from the Samuel Pry farm and approximately one-half mile south of the Upper Bridge, the same location that part of Hooker’s First Corps had crossed the Antietam last evening. The men waded into the swift-flowing stream, the depth of which ranged from knee- to waist-deep. Having gained the west bank of the creek, Isaac Wistar’s dripping troops ascended the valley flank and marched perhaps one-quarter mile to where the brigade columns filed right and then fronted thereby forming three brigade-wide battle lines facing to the west. The three roughly 500-yard-long lines reformed so that they were 60 to 70 paces apart. General Gorman’s brigade occupied the front line and the Philadelphia Brigade the rear. The Californians held the right flank of the brigade line. To their left was Turner Morehead’s 106^th Pennsylvania, followed by Joshua Owen’s 69^th Pennsylvania and finally the 72^nd Pennsylvania. The lines were dressed and the men prepared to advance to the west. Within minutes, as General Howard later recalled, Edwin Sumner, "his gray hair streaming in the wind, rode to the leading brigade and ordered the advance." "Not even a noisy captain or an ambitious file closer anathematized a protruding stomach or a musket in careless position. The men were veterans and knew their business," recalled an obviously proud Colonel Wistar. The order to march was shouted along the lines and the soldiers stepped off at the quick step carrying their rifles at the right shoulder shift, through woods and fields without the protection of skirmishers and flankers. The formation was broken by several fences and a barnyard, perhaps that of the M. Miller farm, but the lines were quickly reorganized.

Just as the division neared a stand of timber more than one mile northeast of the Dunker Church, a single artillery shell probably fired by Jeb Stuart’s Horse Artillery commanded by Captain John Pelham posted on Nicodemus Hill approximately one mile to the front, whizzed over all three brigade lines and exploded harmlessly in the rear of the formation. Within moments, another shell, this one better aimed, struck in the center of the division. Still, most of these long distance artillery rounds did little damage. General Sumner rode out in front of the three lines to scout the grove, the East Woods, which he observed was clear of the enemy. The corps commander did encounter a group of soldiers carrying the wounded Joe Hooker to the rear. Sumner rode a short distance into David Miller’s cornfield immediately west of the woods and returned to the East Woods where Sedgwick’s division was just arriving.

Bull Sumner met with his lieutenant in the woods and ordered Sedgwick to put his lines in motion. Gorman’s brigade, followed by Dana’s and then Howard’s, each at intervals of 50 to 60 yards, were to move toward the Hagerstown Turnpike, about 1,200 feet to the west of the woods. Between 8:40 and 9:00 a.m., a fence on the east boundary of the cornfield was torn down and the division started forward. With this, Pelham’s artillery on Nicodemus Hill and Colonel Stephen D. Lee’s artillery battalion deployed on an rise perhaps 900 yards to the south of the East Woods began shelling Gorman’s regiments emerging from the timber. The brigadier’s men, accompanied by Sumner riding in the advance, put their heads down and started across the cornfield and the open pasture directly south, both of which were littered with bodies in blue and gray. Unaccountably, skirmishers had not been deployed so the men could expect no warning of unseen dangers. Indeed, one participant of this movement observed that "The total disregard of all ordinary military precaution in their swift and solitary advance was so manifest that it was observed and criticised as the devoted band moved on."

General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the Philadelphia Brigade at Antietam

When Napoleon Dana’s regiments issued from the East Woods, they encountered Brigadier General George H. Gordon’s Twelfth Corps brigade recently arrived in position and lying on the ground. Believing the prone men to be Gorman’s line, Dana ordered his soldiers to lie down. This caused the Philadelphia Brigade, still in the woods, to stop its forward movement. Presently the identity of Gordon’s men was established and Dana got his boys to their feet and advancing at the double-quick. While all of this was taking place, Willis Gorman’s regiments had reached and clambered over the post and six-rail fences along the Hagerstown Pike, crossed a clover field and were about to enter the West Woods just north of the Dunker Church.

Before his brigade line entered the cornfield, Howard was ordered by one of General Sumner’s aids to detach a regiment to the support of some Twelfth Corps units a short distance to the north. The brigade commander assigned this duty to the California Regiment and Isaac Wistar led his men away from the line. Just at that moment, however, heavy musketry, probably from Gorman’s line pushing into the West Woods, echoed across the farmland. Sumner immediately called for Howard to bring his regiments up. The brigadier delayed this movement just long enough to enable the Californians to return to the line.

Lieutenant Benjamin Hibbs of Company D was stunned by the sights he saw in what remained of farmer Miller’s cornfield. "The rebels lay everywhere. Many were in their last agony, and only asked us not to tread on them. Some asked for water, but we had not the time, for we were advancing in line of battle." Private George Beidelman of Company C also noted the "good many dead bodies, both our men and the rebels," that littered the field. Indeed, "death and mutilation in shocking form covered the ground on every side," Isaac Wistar wrote two decades later. General Howard, riding behind the 106^th Pennsylvania, instructed the men to take care to avoid stepping on any of "those poor men" of the Union First and Twelfth Corps who lay all about. Twenty years failed to dim Second Lieutenant John Rogers’ (Company G) memory of the awful scenes witnessed by him and his comrades as they crossed the fields over which Hooker’s men had recently battled: "Whole windrows of the rebel dead lay behind demolished rail fences, stumps, clumps of bushes, or any object which offered the least protection as they made the most desperate and determined fight and were shot down in their tracks and our brave boys rushed over them in hot pursuit after the living foe."

Private George Washington Beidelman, Company C

Oliver Howard’s men were targeted by Confederate artillery as they marched in line across the cornfield. Joshua Owen recalled that the line was hit by a crossfire from Pelham’s and S.D. Lee’s artillery. Yet George Beidelman claimed that that shelling did little damage and the men moved on. One of Colonel Baxter’s boys recalled marching by the familiar troops of the 28^th Pennsylvania of the Twelfth Corps who "gave us three hearty cheers as we passed on."

As Howard’s men worked their way across the cornfield, Willis Gorman’s regiments pressed into and through the West Woods. Although the scene in the timber was confusing, the line met with little resistance and shoved disorganized Rebel infantry ahead of it. Before long, Gorman’s four regiments emerged from the west edge of the timber onto a dirt lane near the Alfred Poffenberger farm. By now, Pelham had moved his guns from Nicodemus Hill south to Hauser’s Ridge about 2,000 feet west of the West Woods. As soon as they were fully exposed, Gorman’s veterans were targeted by the gray batterymen as well as Confederate infantry scattered among the buildings of the Poffenberger farm. Meantime, General Dana’s line had entered the West Woods. There was little small arms fire at this time although Pelham’s canister rounds were felling men in both Gorman’s and Dana’s ranks.

General Howard’s line struck the post and rail fence along the Hagerstown Pike obliquely with the men of the right flank, the California Regiment, struggling over the fence first. When all four regiments had crossed the fence the men dressed their lines and began moving across the several-hundred-foot-wide clover field that fronted the woods. Howard redressed the brigade on the right of Dana’s line to the front and pushed his command a bit farther so that the those regiments to the left of the California Regiment started into the woods.

Map of General Sedgwick's assault on the West Woods

Near the right of the brigade line, a ledge of limestone projecting well above the ground (12 to 15 feet according to Isaac Wistar) caused at least part of the California Regiment to lose contact with the 106^th Pennsylvania on its left. Moreover, the ledge obstructed the Californians’ view of the action in the woods and to the their left. By this time, almost 9:30 a.m., much of the brigade line except for Colonel Wistar’s boys had penetrated the woods a short distance. In all likelihood, only a part of the regiment’s left wing may have found itself in the timber. The limestone outcrop that caused the regiment to shift its course lay just outside of a promontory of the woods. Wistar’s men on the right had moved into an embayment of the West Woods while the balance of the brigade line moved toward that part of the West Woods that projected toward the turnpike. Even though they had entered the woods only a short distance or not at all, the Californians found themselves crowded against the right flank of Napoleon Dana’s line and therefore fully exposed to small arms projectiles that passed through the forward lines. Nautrally Wistar’s men could not return fire for fear of hitting friends on their front. "At the moment of shock," the colonel ordered his men to the ground "to avoid unnecessary casualties till its service in action might be required." The Californians found shelter behind rocks, fallen trees, branches and slight waves and depressions in the ground. George Beidelman was glad to hug the earth as Federal artillery rounds apparently fired from First Corps batteries to the north, sailed overhead. Benjamin Hibbs, laying flat on the ground, glanced to his left where he sensed through the billowing smoke, that something disastrous was about to occur.

Private Burns, body pressed to the ground, saw that his friend Sergeant George Suttie had been wounded. Burns helped the injured man a short distance to the rear and returned to the line just as a shell exploded nearby. A piece of iron hit him in the foot slamming William to the ground. Within seconds the foot had swelled so much that Burns could not walk. He lay on the ground for a while until "the shells from the rebels and our batterys [sic] fell so near me that I had to get up and hobble away the best I could."

Benjamin Hibbs’ concern with the left flank of the brigade line was about to be realized. Not long after Gorman’s men arrived on the Poffenberger farm lane, they heard the ear-splitting Rebel yell issue from the woods on their left flank followed by a murderous volley. All of this was the forerunner to General Lafayette McLaws’ lightening strike of Sedgwick’s unprotected left flank. As General Paul Semmes’ brigade pitched into the left of Gorman’s and Dana’s lines, Brigadier General Jubal Early’s Virginia regiments and Brigadier General William Barksdale’s Mississippians pushed north from the Dunker Church against General Howard’s left wing. Soldiers from the left wing units of Gorman’s and Dana’s lines began to fall back toward the northeast edge of the West Woods. Colonel Wistar ordered his men to their feet and the Californians, with bayonets fixed, compelled the fugitives to divert around the regiment.

Men fleeing the front lines charged among the Fire Zouaves on the left of Howard’s line. One of Colonel Baxter’s men recalled hearing the Rebel yell and "immediately from the woods in our front came pouring in the utmost disorder and confusion our whole front line in wild retreat." Colonel Owen called Howard’s attention to the impending disaster on the left flank. Just then, General Sumner, who had been near the front of the division, and two or three of his aides reined up. "My God, we must get out of this!", Sumner shouted, or words to that effect. Some of Colonel Morehead’s who believed that the general was ordering them to charge stood up, cheered and fixed bayonets. Sumner wanted his third line to change its face to the left in an effort to keep the Rebels from flanking the entire division. The din was so great that Howard, like the men of the 106^th Pennsylvania, could not hear the corps commander’s orders. "The noise of musketry and artillery was so great that I judged more by the gestures of the general as to the disposition he wished me to make than by orders that reached my ears." Howard fathomed that the division’s left flank was about to be turned and he "immediately sent the necessary orders to protect my flank by changing the front of my brigade to the left."

Through all of the smoke and haze, Lieutenant Ben Hibbs could see that the left flank was beginning to crumble "and the men began to fall like autumn leaves." At this moment, a Southern battery to the California Regiment’s right and front began firing canister and shell at the lieutenant and his comrades. Lieutenant John Rogers recalled that the air was alive with "the whizzing bullet or the screeching shell." Isaac Wistar peered through the smoke to see where the increasing fire from his regiment’s left was coming from. He climbed an outcrop, possibly the ledge that had caused the regiment to split from the brigade, and was appalled to see that the left flank was giving way and that Rebels were emerging from the woods north of the Dunker Church and surging into the rear of the division. The colonel climbed down off the rock, formed the California Regiment into column of companies and ordered the men to wheel left with himself as pivot man. At this instant, a ball slammed into and through Wistar’s left shoulder. John Rogers had been standing on the left flank of Company G and was immediately at his colonel’s side. Blood streamed from beneath Wistar’s left sleeve and the lieutenant fashioned a tourniquet from his commander’s handkerchief and a bayonet.

Fighting in the West Woods		Colonel Isaac Wistar

As Wistar had observed before he was wounded, Howard’s left flank was in a bad fix. The Fire Zouaves were particularly hard hit and were beginning to give way. Joshua Owen could see from his post that the 72^nd was "subjected to a heavier fire, and the first to encounter the panic-stricken fugitives from the left." The fright on the left started to spread to the right. William Burns who was struggling to the rear at the time, heard the intensity of the fighting increase as the flanking Rebels struck the left of the Philadelphia Brigade. "[Y]ou could hardly hear yourself speak for the noise."

Howard tried to get his units to change front but there was little room in which to maneuver. He later wrote that "With troops that I had commanded longer I could have changed front,…but here, quicker than I can write the words, my men faced about and took the back track." "[I]n terrible confusion," was the way Howard described the flight of the Philadelphia Brigade in his post-battle report. Colonel Baxter and the survivors of the badly handled 72^nd Pennsylvania, withdrew to the east along much the same route that had brought them to the West Woods. The 69^th attempted to change front to the south but it was too late and Colonel Owen’s men streamed off to the northeast. The flight of the 69^th uncovered the left flank of the 106^th Pennsylvania. Some of Turner Morehead’s men hastened across the turnpike and behind a fence running at a right angle to the road in an open field. From here they tried to check the charging Rebels. Other members of the 106^th retreated more to the north where they found shelter behind some haystacks near the Miller barn. They were joined by a number of men of the 15^th Massachusetts of Gorman’s brigade.

The panic on the left finally infected the California Regiment, and the men began to fall back. Most drifted north in a manner that George Beidelman described as "slowly, though in some confusion." Captain Levin B. Day of the 3^rd Delaware which had been deployed near the north edge of the West Woods and about 250 yards due west of the David Miller farm wrote that some of the Californians retreated through the ranks of his regiment. Lieutenant Hibbs recalled leaving the woods "in common time" and heading north. He and some other men turned to look back and observed that "we had left the ground thickly strewn with our dead and wounded, but it could not be avoided."

Isaac Wistar had not fully recovered from his Ball’s Bluff wound to the right arm, and now his left arm was badly damaged. John Rogers, who had applied a tourniquet to the colonel, offered and then insisted to remain at his commander’s side. Wistar ordered lieutenant to retreat with the rest of the regiment but to take the colonel’s sword. With the Rebels now in sight, Rogers grabbed the sword and hurried after the fleeing column. Before he got very far, a Confederate officer ordered him to halt, "but I started on a wild run for my regiment" which he safely reached but not without running a gauntlet of small arms fire. Within minutes of Rogers’ departure from Wistar’s side, the Southern line swept over the colonel.

The disorganized remnants of the California Regiment were swept by Confederate artillery to their left (west) as they withdrew to the north. About 25 Californians huddled behind a stone fence that ran east to west and began firing at Rebels emerging from the West Woods, no doubt some of those same men passing over Colonel Wistar. Several grayclads fell and the others returned to the woods only to reform and charge out. Soon, Rebel batteries on the high ground to the west began sweeping the fence with canister and solid shot. Benjamin Hibbs recalled that "A dull sound beside me attracted my attention, and on looking around I caught sight of something flying through the air - particles of a man’s skull. A shell had taken his head completely off."

The men along the stone fence and some nearby limestone outcrops resumed the retreat to the north. Hibbs and some of his comrades began to fall back when a shell hit the ground several feet away from the lieutenant showering him with dirt and sharp pieces of limestone. A fence rail "hurled against me, tearing off my haversack, and sending me rolling on the ground." Although he believed that "my earthly career was about ended," Hibbs picked himself up off the ground and hustled away with the other men. Some of the fugitives plodding north encountered Brigadier General George Gordon Meade who was leading a small force cobbled together from survivors of the earlier fighting toward the exultant Rebels swarming out of the West Woods.

Isaac Wistar lay on the ground in agonizing pain near the edge of the West Woods as the Rebel line passed over him. In minutes, a Confederate lieutenant left his place in line, walked over to Wistar and demanded the colonel’s sword. When the Rebel officer learned that this would not be possible, he demanded that Wistar sign a parole. At this point, several general officers, perhaps McClaws, John Walker and Stuart, and maybe even John Mosby, arrived on the scene. Wistar, who by this time was quite weak, informed a Rebel courier of his mistreatment at the hands of the lieutenant. General Stuart ordered the officer, a Lieutenant Hill of the 12^th Georgia Regiment, Trimble’s Brigade, back to his command. The Southern courier helped rearrange the colonel’s tourniquet and handed him the canteen of a wounded Californian who had offered Wistar his canteen.

Benjamin Hibbs and a score or so of Californians, retreated through the North Woods to a house, probably the Joseph Poffenberger farm, where the exhausted officer collapsed. Most of the men rallied in a potato patch in the rear of the house while nearby batteries of the First Corps opened fire on the Rebels debauching from the West Woods. Using their bayonets as spades, the boys dug up all of the tubers from the garden. Some Californians entered the vacated house and found several jars of apple butter. "A few unlucky chickens were knocked over, and pot-pies were being prepared with all possible speed," recounted Hibbs, when Rebel artillery posted to the southwest zeroed in on the Union artillery and the farmhouse. Although the shelling did little more than rough up perhaps a half dozen men and cover them with dirt, the Californians demonstrated a full range of emotions during the barrage. Lieutenant Hibbs explained that "Some [men] were scared badly, some laughed, and some cursed the rebels for the interruption."

The shelling of the Poffenberger farm compelled the Californians to retreat to a position out of range of the artillery. Carrying that which had been cooked or was about to be cooked, the boys hustled several hundred yards to the northeast. They improved their lot by making use of some fine cattle that recently had been killed by Rebel cannon fire. After a fine meal, the bloodied, exhausted and leaderless men tried to get some rest.

The fighting on the Federal right flank was over by about 10:00 a.m. and, according to one member of General Sedgwick’s battered brigade, "the successes of the morning were lost." The battle continued the rage to the south. At about the same time that Sedgwick’s men were driving into the West Woods, troops of General French’s division of the Second Corps had been driven back in their ill-fated attack of Confederate ranks deployed along a sunken road that branched off from the Hagerstown Pike about 1,500 feet south of the Dunker Church. Several more assaults of the entrenched Southern line were also repulsed with terrible loss. By about 1:00 p.m., regiments of Israel Richardson’s division finally drove the Alabamians and North Carolinians from the sunken road. At about the same time, Pennsylvania and New York troops of the Ninth Corps were carrying the Rohrbach or Lower Bridge over the Antietam Creek. But just as these men had gained the high ground on the outskirts of Sharpsburg, they were struck and repulsed by A.P. Hill’s division of Stonewall Jackson’s corps which had made a forced march from Harpers Ferry. By about 5:00 p.m., the Battle of Antietam was over.

Isaac Wistar lay in the clover meadow near the West Woods for much of the day. Although the fighting in this sector of the field had ended, stray artillery rounds continued to fall among the wounded men within and around the woods. That evening, two slightly wounded Californians who agreed to take a chance on getting back to friendly lines, helped their colonel to his feet. The three men set off in a southerly direction along the Rebel line avoiding large tree branches and bodies that lay scattered about. Interestingly, when the Yankees explained to several Confederates who they met along the route that they were trying to get to the rear of the Union line, the trio was given free passage. Perhaps everybody had had their share of fighting for the day. The men passed the Dunker Church and came to a sunken farm path that Colonel Wistar recalled was "piled with Confederate dead," no doubt the Bloody Lane of later years. "It was difficult in our condition to crawl over and through the two fences and these tangled corpses lying between them in every attitude of death, but at last it was by mutual aid accomplished," Wistar explained. He and his companions finally arrived at a small two-room cabin that had been transformed into a field hospital. "Amputations and operations were proceeding inside and outside," the colonel later wrote, "and the floor was slippery with blood." The shack was crowded with wounded men, but stewards fixed a place for Wistar on a bed that was already occupied by three wounded officers of the California Regiment. At length surgeons decided to transfer the colonel to a general hospital at Keedysville. He and Second Lieutenant William Wilson, Company B, were placed on an ambulance which was soon jolting "horribly over the rough fields." The terrible ride was too much for Wilson who became delirious and died before the rig reached the hospital. Wistar was taken to a house where his wife Sarah, had been waiting for much of the day having received word that her husband had been killed.

Captain R. Penn Smith of Company A had assumed command of the regiment after Wistar went down. But Smith had been wounded in the left ankle and had gone to the rear seeking medical attention. When roll was called that night, only 218 men and officers responded when their names were shouted. Joseph Elliot claimed that there were only six officers left standing with the regiment after the battle. Among that number was First Lieutenant William H. Dull, Company B, who found himself in command of the California Regiment. The regiment had suffered terribly in the vortex of the West Woods. Twenty-six men had been killed outright, approximately one man killed per minute that the regiment fought that morning. One source claimed that the regiment had suffered most of its casualties in the space of five minutes. Among the dead on the field was Sergeant Alban T. Paist of Company C, the man who had written of his experiences on, and escape from Ball’s Bluff. William Burns friend, Corporal William Black also had been killed during the morning. Burns believed that Company G had lost four men killed and seven wounded. George Beidelman recorded that Company C lost nine men killed and wounded, including the popular First Lieutenant E. Carlyle Norris who had been shot through the chest but still was alive. Company K suffered three men killed and 14 hurt, including 35-year-old First Lieutenant Patrick J. Phillips. Recently promoted Second Lieutenant John Convery had been grievously wounded in the leg and shoulder. Of the 95 men and officers who had been wounded, eleven would die of their injuries.

The roughly 25 minutes that the California Regiment fought in and around the West Woods on September 17, 1862, would be the unit’s bloodiest service as measured by the number of men killed and mortally wounded. The regiment lost approximately 27 percent of the 510 men and officers who had crossed Antietam Creek. Although its position on the right of the brigade line kept the California Regiment relatively removed from the slashing Confederate flank attack, it suffered the second highest number of losses in the brigade behind the battered 72^nd Pennsylvania. The Californians, like many other members of the Army of the Potomac, remained vigilant that night, for General Lee’s intentions remained unclear. Lieutenant Dull’s men would sleep on their arms that night. No doubt some of these veterans of Ball’s Bluff and the Virginia peninsula, both poorly handled affairs, sat about camp fires rehashing the day’s events and who should be blamed for the fiasco in the West Woods. Private William Burns, nursing his bruised foot in a field hospital, probably recorded the opinion of most of the officers and men when he complained to his journal that "our division was badly handled by our Generals Howard, Sedgwick and Sumner."

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