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00:02Deep in the Tennessee frontier, a dense, wet forest is about to become the site of one of the American
00:08Civil War's bloodiest and most shocking battles.
00:12A federal battle force led by Ulysses S. Grant, his Confederate opposition led by Albert S. Johnston.
00:19At stake, the fate of the Confederacy's western half and the lives of some 110,000 soldiers preparing to wage
00:28war on both sides of a battlefield that would come to be known as Shiloh.
00:36Today, they are vast, tranquil stretches of farm field, forest and protected land.
00:42But once, these landscapes witnessed the horror of war.
00:45This is their story. This is Battlefield America.
01:05250 Union soldiers are up early and on patrol.
01:09For the past three days, they've been exchanging shots with Confederates.
01:15Some worry that a rebel assault is imminent.
01:19Their superiors remain unconvinced.
01:24But soon, the high command will realize its terrible mistake.
01:30Amidst the dense Tennessee timber, 9,000 Confederates launch a surprise attack.
01:39Over the next two days of fighting, our nation would witness a preview of the violence and bloodshed still to
01:46come in this Civil War.
01:52We're about a full year into the war, and there have been mixed degrees of success for the Confederacy to
01:59that point.
02:00Both Union and Confederate armies realized that there were differences between fighting and campaigning in the east versus doing so
02:07in the west.
02:08The Southerners found in the east that they were able to secure easy defensive positions along the numerous rivers in
02:15the east.
02:15But in the west, the many rivers out there acted as super highways for Union armies to invade into the
02:21south.
02:22But the Confederates have the advantage of fighting on their home turf.
02:27I can only imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers in unfamiliar territory, where you have woods
02:32dotted by open fields between and then deep ravines, all of which look almost exactly the same.
02:38It is much better to have friendly people helping you through the woods and taking unknown paths like this one
02:44that are completely unmarked.
02:45It's good to have that populace giving you water, giving you meat, giving you pie as you go along and
02:51cheering you on toward the next battle.
02:53This battle was gearing up to be a bloody one.
02:57So if you think about the armaments in the Western Theater in 1862, it's a distinct mix between rifled muskets.
03:03We've known about rifling for a long time, the grooves inside of a barrel that put a spin on the
03:07ball, enabling it like a quarterback throwing a spiral.
03:10So now you can be lethal at a longer range and certainly more accurate at closer ranges.
03:16And at this point, those are starting to come into both armies.
03:19But smoothbores, what we had traditionally known from the time of Washington or Napoleon, would have just been literally a
03:25smooth barrel that fires a round ball, kind of come out like a knuckleball, accurate out to 100 yards, hit
03:30the ground at 200 yards.
03:31There's a distinct mix of both of those arms in both armies.
03:37The war had begun poorly for the United States Army.
03:40The Rebel Army's victories at Bull Run in Virginia and Wilson's Creek in Missouri a year earlier had given them
03:47an early advantage.
03:48But out west, beyond the Appalachian Mountains, the tide is turning.
03:53Under Brigadier General Ulysses Grant, Northern troops earned victories at Forts Henry and Donaldson.
04:00Meanwhile, Kentucky is now firmly under U.S. control, as is much of central Tennessee, including its capital, Nashville, a
04:08crucial industrial and supply center.
04:11Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate's western commander, had no choice but to retreat to his southwest.
04:18Under the orders of Major General Henry Halleck, Grant's soldiers give chase.
04:24Using a fleet of 174 steamboats, they follow the Tennessee River deep into the heart of the western Confederacy.
04:32There's not a lot of infrastructure in the United States at the time of the Civil War writ large.
04:37The further west you get, it becomes more and more rudimentary.
04:40So the rivers now allow you to move massive numbers of people and massive numbers of supplies.
04:47The United States Army has swollen to 40,000 men.
04:52Their target, Corinth, Mississippi.
04:55A river town and vital rail junction.
05:01One line stretching north from the Gulf of Mexico.
05:04Another connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Mississippi River.
05:09By mid-March, Grant's army appears poised to capture Corinth.
05:14Just 20 miles from their target, they hold a strong position at Pittsburgh Landing.
05:19Waterways protect both of their flanks and their rear.
05:22But ever-cautious General Halleck isn't ready to engage.
05:26He orders Grant to hold until an additional 30,000 men from Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio arrive
05:34from Nashville.
05:40Meanwhile, across America, northerners and southerners alike await news from the front through any of the nearly 4,000 newspapers
05:48in print.
05:50Battlefield reporters are their window into the conflict, and at the time, perhaps their best source for learning whether or
05:56not their loved ones had become a casualty of war.
06:00On April 2nd, Confederate General Albert S. Johnston learns that Buell's approaching column still has not reached Grant.
06:09It is an opportunity to strike his opponent while they are divided, and Johnston seizes it.
06:15General PGT Beauregard, a Confederate hero from Bull Run, plans the attack.
06:24But the rainy weather turns the roads into mush. Now, it's the rebel army that is delayed.
06:31All the things that make the incredibly easy difficult is friction, and friction creates delays, and that upsets timetables and
06:38all the grand plans that generals think about on paper that now run into the reality of operating on a
06:43real battlefield.
06:45Believing the element of surprise has been lost, Beauregard urges retreat, but his superior, General Johnston, is undeterred.
06:53Gentlemen, he declares, we will attack at daylight.
06:57U.S. Army commanders, meanwhile, believe that the bulk of Johnston's 44,000-man army remains at Corinth.
07:05Albert Sidney Johnston is probably the most distinguished of all the Confederate generals at the start of the war.
07:11His reputation sort of falls into peril, though, because by the time of Shiloh, the Confederate position in the West
07:17is sort of falling apart.
07:18So in many ways, he's trying to both save his own reputation and the Confederate military position in the West.
07:26Much of Grant's fighting force is still new to battle.
07:30Overall, the Federals are woefully unprepared for what is about to come next.
07:39Johnston's aim is to turn Grant's left flank away from its lifeline at Pittsburgh Landing, but it's Grant's right side
07:46that absorbs the first Confederate attacks.
07:49William Hardy's rebel brigades advance on William Sherman's division.
07:55But even as late as 7 o'clock a.m., General Sherman remains skeptical that this is anything more than
08:02a minor skirmish.
08:05The killing of his orderly and a gunshot to his hand finally convince him of Johnston's larger intent.
08:12The fighting continues around a nearby swamp, where the regiments of Confederate Brigadier General Patrick Claiborne become separated and caught
08:20in a vicious crossfire.
08:22Hundreds are killed or wounded.
08:24The intense fighting lies just south of a humble church that would later give its name to this battle, Shiloh,
08:31a Hebrew word meaning a place of peace.
08:37Despite their initial resistance, the Union's lines have been stretched dangerously thin.
08:43Benjamin Prentiss aligns his 6th Division, including 12 cannons on the Eastern Corinth Road.
08:49His troops are untested, but deliver a withering assault on Adley Gladden's brigade until they find themselves under a Confederate
08:58attack and are forced to fall back.
09:01U.S. soldiers race backward towards Pittsburgh landing, while their adversaries, ignoring the orders of their officers to advance, slow
09:09their pursuit to plunder the retreating army's food and supplies.
09:15A precious hour is lost.
09:18It has been a brutal march from the 3rd of June as they've exited Corinth. Heavy rains and muds. The
09:23men are rather exhausted.
09:25They're taking care of their human needs. That's, you know, first and foremost on their minds.
09:31In the case of Johnston, he has had some sense that Grant doesn't really expect this to be coming. Grant
09:36and Sherman are essentially caught with their pants down.
09:40Amidst the panic, Union defensive lines are patched together with anyone in shouting distance.
09:46At the same time, casualties and the difficult terrain are beginning to unravel the Confederates' command structure.
09:54Just hours into battle, Shiloh has already degenerated into a soldier's fight.
10:14Alerted by the distant thunder of artillery, Grant makes his way for Pittsburgh landing.
10:22He orders Bull Nelson's division, an early arrival from Buell's Army of the Ohio, to begin moving toward the battle.
10:29But Nelson and his troops have miles yet to travel.
10:33Grant also orders Lew Wallace's 7,500-man division to reinforce his lines.
10:38But a series of errors and delays turn a two-hour march into seven.
10:43Neither Nelson nor Wallace will be able to join the fight before nightfall, and Grant himself is hobbled by a
10:50sprained ankle.
10:51Still, after arriving at the landing, he drives his horse the length of his battle lines, rushing men and ammunition
10:58to the front.
11:00But until Wallace and soldiers from Buell's Army of the Ohio arrive, Grant remains outnumbered.
11:09By 10.30 a.m., the Confederates are in clear control of the battlefield.
11:15Grant's right flank is pushed back, first to the crossroads of Hamburg, Purdy and Corinth Rose, and then to Jones
11:21Field.
11:22They're just a mile and a half from Johnston's target, Pittsburgh Landing.
11:26But Johnston has made a tactical error.
11:29Instead of splitting Grant's troops, he has driven them toward Pittsburgh Landing, where they can join forces with others to
11:35form a stronger resistance.
11:37To make matters worse for the Confederates, many of their soldiers drop out of line again to scavenge Union supplies.
11:45This delay is all Sherman and Major General John A. McLernan need to regroup and launch a ferocious counterattack.
11:53By noon, they've rolled over the distracted Confederates.
11:57For the next three hours, the Union Army's determined stand forces Johnston to commit his last reserves.
12:06Johnston is going all in.
12:14Confederate brigades on Johnston's right make repeated attempts to dislodge Stephen Hurlbut's stubborn division from a blooming peach orchard.
12:25Johnston rallies his brigades to attack en masse, and by 2 o'clock, Hurlbut's line begins to give.
12:34Much of the cohesion or the lack of cohesion of troops depends on the kind of psychological state of soldiers,
12:40and so part of what a general's job is to look brave.
12:45But Johnston's fortunes are about to change.
12:48While Grant nurses an injured ankle, Johnston himself is hampered by an old dueling injury that left his right leg
12:55numb most of the time.
12:56He may not have realized that a bullet had severed an artery.
13:00By 2.45, Johnston had bled to death.
13:04He would be the highest ranking officer killed during the Civil War.
13:09On the battlefield, however, there is no time to mark Johnston's death.
13:15In Grant's center, the division of WHL Wallace and the remnants of Princess' ranks form a half-mile front in
13:22a thick overgrowth along an old wagon cut.
13:256,200 men and 25 cannon prepare for what will become one of the iconic firefights of Shiloh.
13:34By this point, thousands of Grant's men have retreated in panic.
13:39One of his key generals, Lew Wallace, is still missing, and Bull Nelson's reinforcements remain far from the front line.
13:47Low on options, Grant orders a new line of defense on high ground near the landing.
13:52Sherman and McClernand's ranks are depleted, but he has no fresh troops to offer them.
13:57Then, the Confederates pause again, this time to deliver ammunition to the front lines.
14:02Sherman and McClernand reform along the edge of a rugged ravine.
14:06By 4 p.m., Hurlbut withdraws, forcing Prentiss to angle his left flank with Grant's right and left flanks in
14:15retreat.
14:16Sounds of heavy fighting in the center draw Confederate brigades like a magnet.
14:21WHL Wallace's outnumbered Federals put up a fierce defense from an overgrown thicket.
14:26Their intense fire fills the air with whizzing metal.
14:30The Rebels call it the Hornet's Nest.
14:33A powerful image that still resonates today.
14:39Every part of you might be telling you, if you're a Union soldier, to simply flee the field at Shiloh.
14:43And then all of a sudden, you see Confederates in your front, unlimbering an untold number of cannons pummeling your
14:49position.
14:50Many of your captains and majors and lieutenants, and of course, the foot soldiers next to you are going down
14:56as the Confederates actually begin to surround your whole position.
14:59And still, many of you are just going to stand there because that is your orders.
15:03That is what you have to do to help keep the Union together at that point.
15:10With their adversaries hidden behind trees and smoke, the attacking rebel soldiers would have tasted some of the terror and
15:17confusion of the moment as well.
15:20The Confederates saw a deadly wood line with white smoke shooting black powder out toward them, and they saw a
15:27lot of their friends dying, and they were told to attack again.
15:30And they are going to come upon a field covered in dead and wounded.
15:34It's a carpet of blue, gray, and red.
15:37And across that field, they will have to charge again and again until that Union position will either fall or
15:43those soldiers surrender.
15:46Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles pounds the hornet's nest with more than 50 cannon.
15:51The largest concentration of artillery on the North American continent up to that time.
15:56By 5 p.m., elements of 14 of the 16 Confederate brigades on the field surround the hornet's nest and
16:03repeatedly attempt to pierce the U.S. Army stronghold with bayonet charges.
16:07The fighting is so fierce, part of the thicket catches fire, burning some soldiers alive.
16:13Wallace and Prentiss attempt to withdraw their troops, but then Wallace is shot in the head and left for dead.
16:21Over 2,000 Union men are ultimately captured, but not before stalling the Confederate advance for hours.
16:28The end of the first day of Shiloh finds the Confederacy in a commanding position, but Grant's lines have not
16:35been broken, and with fresh troops on the way, there is hope for the U.S. Army.
16:40As Grant observed, the endeavor of the enemy on the first day was simply to hurl their men against arms,
16:47first at one point, then at another, sometimes at several points at once.
16:52This they did with daring and energy, until at night, the rebel troops were worn out.
17:01That evening, heavy cannon fire from the Union timber clads, Tyler and Lexington, pesters the Confederate lines.
17:09Although it's been pushed back, Grant's last line on April 6th is formidable.
17:15Huge ravines at Dill Branch and Tillman Branch separate it from the Confederates.
17:20The rebels have withdrawn to the captured Union camps, their ranks too exhausted from the day to reform or rearm.
17:29As Henry Villard remembered it, none of us attempted to sleep during that memorable, dismal night.
17:35Nor would sleep have been possible, as the gunboat sent roaring eight-inch shells over us every ten minutes, in
17:41the direction of the enemy, in order to at least deprive the rebels of rest.
17:47Through the night, a heavy rain soaks the living and the dead alike.
17:52In the words of U.S. Army Captain William S. Swan of Company C of the 57th Illinois Infantry,
17:59Being without shelter, the cold rain soaked through our clothing to our partially paralyzed bodies.
18:05The brain was benumbed from cold and hunger.
18:08Weak men gave away to despair, and strong men cursed the misfortunes that placed our cause in such a position.
18:16Things like weather are outside of our control.
18:18And so when it rains, it's just one more burden.
18:22It's going to slow everything down, the mud, the water.
18:25And now, oh by the way, everything you own is soaking wet.
18:29All those things build up this degree of misery that slowly tear at your will,
18:34and what ultimately is in warfare a clash of wills to be able to carry on.
18:40Amidst the uncertainty in the gloom, PGT Beauregard, now in command of the rebel army,
18:46believes that Grant's reinforcements are not coming,
18:49and sends a dispatch to Richmond proclaiming complete victory.
18:54He should not have been so confident.
18:57During the chaos of the first day of battle,
19:00the Confederates seem to disregard the eventual arrival of Lew Wallace's division
19:05and the start of Buell's army.
19:07They may have also underestimated Ulysses S. Grant.
19:11The common advice to Grant is, we should pull back across the river.
19:15And he's like, why would we do that?
19:16It speaks volumes about Ulysses S. Grant, his determination,
19:19and his ability to infuse his will into his army.
19:23One rebel, however, did see the writing on the wall.
19:27Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, a notorious thorn in the Union side.
19:32But when he alerts the Confederate high command to the arrival of fresh troops,
19:37he is brushed off.
19:39The advantages of the Union Army is they survived that first punch.
19:43Reinforcements are coming.
19:44They've been in kind of a theater where the Union Army has had relative success.
19:48They get a sense of they can kind of get some revenge for how badly their first day went.
19:53Grant vows to whip his enemy at daylight.
20:00By 6 o'clock a.m., Grant has 40,000 soldiers at the ready, half of which are battle-fresh.
20:08The weary Confederates number around 28,000.
20:12Grant's army moves to retake the field and drive the rebels back.
20:16But Beauregard manages a solid defense.
20:20Despite his savage counterattacks, he is forced back two hours later to a position along the Hamburg-Purdy Road.
20:29The Confederate lines are severely weakened.
20:32At this point in the battle, Grant's army is too much for Beauregard's depleted ranks to handle.
20:38A two-page spread in Harper's Magazine captures the battle's deciding moment.
20:43At 2 o'clock, rather than watch his army crumble, Beauregard calls off the rebel resistance and retreats back to
20:50Corinth.
20:51Grant then decides to rest his troops rather than pursue the fleeing rebel army.
21:02In all, nearly 24,000 men are killed, missing or maimed in just two days.
21:11At the time, Shiloh is by far the bloodiest battle in American history.
21:18As Henry Villard remembered it, neither the one side nor the other had removed its dead.
21:24And there they were, blue and gray in their starkness, lying here singly and there, literally in rows and heaps.
21:33Union soldier Edgar Pierce's memory of the battle's aftermath paints an even more grim picture.
21:40I had human bodies for my landmarks from Monday till Friday night.
21:44And by that time, they were so bloated that you could hardly tell what they were.
21:48And Union men at that, literally torn all to pieces, heads gone and bodies cut right in two.
21:56Shiloh, the church that gave the battle its name, is now a Confederate hospital, overwhelmed by the bodies arriving through
22:03its doorway.
22:05Though he is victorious at Shiloh, Grant is vilified in the press for the heavy losses.
22:11Many demand his removal from command.
22:15President Lincoln refuses, saying,
22:18I can't spare this man. He fights.
22:22In Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederacy loses a prized leader.
22:27No general will fill his void in the Western theater.
22:31After Shiloh, Corinth is the next to fall.
22:35And soon there will be more U.S. Army victories in the West.
22:40It is, in the end, a Confederate defeat, a pretty serious one.
22:45But they don't just give up, either.
22:47And that means that the Union's going to have to do a lot of hard fighting ahead of it.
22:53What always comes to mind for me is this being kind of a proving ground for Ulysses S. Grant.
22:59He comes to establish himself as a giant in the Western theater.
23:04We have few battles in history where a leader loses day one and then achieves victory.
23:10By April of 1862, you have a hero in the Northern Army.
23:16In his memoirs, Grant himself acknowledges how this battle changed him
23:21and foreshadows the scale of bloodshed still to come,
23:24declaring that after Shiloh, I gave up the idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest.
23:39Today, Shiloh's pastures and thickets, orchards and ravines are quiet.
23:48At Shiloh National Cemetery, 3,584 Civil War dead lie buried.
23:552,359 of them are unknown.
24:01Some 4,000 acres of battlefield have been preserved.
24:05Efforts continue to preserve even more land,
24:08to protect the grounds where Americans fought and died from being lost to the March of Progress.
24:14The sounds of firefights and bayonet charges have been erased from this land,
24:19but the memory of what happened at the Battle of Shiloh will not be forgotten.
24:32The Civil War has been raging for more than a year, but its bloodiest days are still yet to come.
24:39By the fall of 1862, Ulysses S. Grant's army has taken control of large sections of the Confederacy's western half.
24:47But it's a different story of the East, where the rebels have pushed the Union army from the doorstep of
24:52their own capital in Richmond, Virginia,
24:55to the doorstep of the Federal capital in Washington, D.C.
24:59Coming off a string of victories in what would come to be known as the Seven Days Battles,
25:04Second Manassas in Cedar Mountain, Lee has seized the initiative,
25:10and now prepares to lead his army onto Union soil for the first time.
25:16Here in western Maryland, just about 50 miles from the U.S. capital, Lee will take his biggest risk yet,
25:24while Abraham Lincoln will do everything in his power to stop him.
25:29The Battle of Antietam will be a battle for the ages,
25:32one that will rewrite the nation's understanding of the war and rewrite the story of America for good.
25:47At Antietam, there was always more at stake than a simple victory.
25:52Lee has taken a major risk by crossing the Potomac River into Maryland.
25:57The Confederacy can no longer claim that they are merely defending their own land.
26:03On the Federal side, George McClellan understands keenly that his is the only fighting force between the rebels in Washington,
26:10D.C.
26:11And after his recent embarrassments at the hands of Lee's army in Virginia,
26:15McClellan is under pressure from Abraham Lincoln to end the rebel uprising once and for all.
26:22Lee's invasion begins with a gamble.
26:24He divides his army and sends General Stonewall Jackson to capture the Union stronghold at Harpers Ferry.
26:32And while Lee is in this compromised position, McClellan's forces race toward him with surprising speed.
26:40McClellan, usually more cautious in battle, catches Lee off guard.
26:44What Lee did not know is that a copy of his Special Orders 191 had fallen into the hands of
26:51the Union.
26:52In fact, that Special Order was found wrapped around three cigars in a field.
26:56And what those orders did was tell George McClellan that Robert E. Lee's army was split up into five pieces,
27:03giving McClellan an opportunity if he moved fast enough.
27:08For the moment, Lee is vastly outnumbered.
27:13McClellan presses Lee and his diminished army up against South Mountain
27:16and regains control of the territory for the Union.
27:20The Confederates suffer nearly 2,700 casualties, but it is not a knockout blow.
27:26In fact, the rebels hold out long enough for Lee to regroup and consolidate his forces nearby.
27:34Lee appears to select a strong defensive position among the rolling farm fields near the town of Sharpsburg.
27:42But he is bluffing.
27:45His line on September 15th is a mirage, designed to buy still more time to gather his forces.
27:52By this point, his next in command, Stonewall Jackson, has successfully taken Harpers Ferry.
27:59Jackson's reinforcements are on the way toward Lee's lines.
28:03Meanwhile, McClellan, still with the secret copy of Lee's plans, has grown hesitant.
28:09He has Lee outnumbered, but he doesn't realize his advantage.
28:13He pauses for two days to sharpen his strategy.
28:17Lee's bluff appears to be working, but he's on a tightrope.
28:21His forces are still spread out, and he's left himself just a single escape route back to Virginia.
28:26But on the other hand, Maryland has a lot to offer an ambitious and hungry army.
28:33Lee realizes that supplies are starting to suffer.
28:37They're starting to run low.
28:38And so that is one of the major motivations, to take the war into Maryland,
28:42to just relieve some of the pressure on civilians and on southern food and supplies.
28:50When we think about the landscape around Antietam, you would have had orchards that are full.
28:56You would have had cornfields that were still high and ripe.
28:59And so this is the canvas upon which these two armies are going to fight.
29:05Lee is going for the destruction of the Union Army in the East, right?
29:09And he hasn't quite achieved that yet.
29:12Lee also still has hopes in the Confederacy as a whole that Maryland might actually be this massive reservoir of
29:19secessionist sentiment.
29:21But this part of Maryland is more committed to the Union than Lee realizes.
29:25Lee doesn't receive the hero's welcome he expected in this part of Maryland.
29:29He'll have to fight with the soldiers he brought with him, alone.
29:33George McClellan has his own challenges to contend with.
29:37McClellan is in a perilous situation because McClellan has now had, for a long time,
29:42a terrible relationship with Lincoln for a variety of reasons.
29:45Lincoln doesn't really trust McClellan.
29:47McClellan is very not good at encouraging Lincoln to trust him.
29:51The stakes couldn't be higher for the opposing generals and their armies,
29:56all the way down to the frontline soldiers.
29:58There is a growing sense of dread about the looming battle.
30:01I began to feel wretchedly faint of heart, for it seemed timely that the coming of battle meant my certain
30:08death.
30:09Private Ezra E. Stickley, Company A, 5th Virginia Infantry.
30:18McClellan settles on his plan of attack.
30:21First, he'll hit Lee's left, then his right, before finishing him off in the center.
30:28McClellan's first attack begins early Wednesday morning, September 17th, as the soldiers of Joe Hooker's 1st Corps march south, aiming
30:37for the Dunker Church.
30:38But it is the Confederates who occupy the high ground around it.
30:43The Antietam battlefield has numerous woodlocks, but only one of them had a whitewashed brick church standing out in sharp
30:49relief against it on high ground.
30:51And that is the Dunker Church.
30:53It was something that could be pointed to, something that could be aimed at.
30:57And it happened to be the position of a whole bunch of Confederate artillery.
31:01Lee's forces unleash destructive artillery fire on Hooker's front lines and to his right.
31:06Then Stonewall Jackson's infantry engages them near Miller's cornfield.
31:11Hooker responds with his own artillery.
31:13Some call it artillery hell.
31:16The battle here quickly escalates into some of the most savage fighting of the Civil War.
31:23To the west, John Gibbon's United States Iron Brigade fares better, marching through and around the cornfield.
31:31They enter the Westwoods, where they face vicious Confederate counterattacks.
31:37By 7 a.m., Hooker and his Union fighters are making progress in the cornfield.
31:43In Jackson's line, Lee's left flank is under a very real threat of collapse.
31:50But just then, momentum shifts.
31:53John Bell Hood's hard fighting division counterattacks through the cornfield and drives Hooker back, though at a frightful loss.
32:01Hooker calls for support from Major General Joseph Mansfield's 12th Corps.
32:06Mansfield advances his divisions in a stacked formation that makes them an easy target for Confederate artillery.
32:13Mansfield is mortally wounded within minutes of entering the front lines.
32:18Yet, one division of the 12th Corps does manage to break through the Confederate line and reaches the Dunker Church.
32:26Before he can follow up on this initial success, however,
32:29General Hooker gets shot in the foot and is forced to lead the fight.
32:34Lacking a leader to unite the 1st and 12th Corps, there is no rapid follow-through on the U.S.
32:40Army's success at Dunker Church.
32:43Then, around 9 a.m., with little sense of the rebel positions, General Edwin Sumner leads his 2nd Corps into
32:51the fight.
32:51Though his three divisions alone are nearly half the size of Lee's entire army, Sumner's columns are strung out.
32:59He attacks with just a single division. Sumner intends to turn the Confederate left flank, but in its current formation,
33:07it's his own that's vulnerable.
33:09Sumner's largest division, that of John Sedgwick moves into the west woods and is overwhelmed by a powerful Confederate counterattack.
33:20Sedgwick falls back with barely half of his men.
33:25Lee's left flank has been battered and bruised, but it is not broken.
33:32By now, it is only mid-morning, and the casualties are mounting at a stunning rate.
33:42Certainly, when the battle begins and we're starting to fight across the Miller Cornfield, it's horrific.
33:47They talk about a storm of iron and hail. They talk about battle lines that melt as if it wax
33:53before a fire.
33:55They talk about men that are not falling out of the lines, they're being knocked out of the lines by
33:59the dozens. This is horrific.
34:02By this point in the war, most soldiers understand the chaos and horror of battle.
34:08But back home, loved ones often cling to a different image of their father, son, brother, or husband on the
34:16front line.
34:20For soldiers who are going off to war, a lot of them, one of the very first things that they
34:24do is they go and get a daguerreotype made of themselves.
34:28It's kind of the quintessential 19th century image of martial masculinity.
34:33They're brave. They're ready to go off to the war. They're ready to kill the enemy.
34:38A lot of them pose with their pistols across their chest or standing stoically with a sword by their side.
34:45Many of these same soldiers would carry images in their own pockets as well.
34:51They would have daguerreotypes made of their wives, of their children, of other family members, siblings,
34:56and they would bring those with them into camp and they would often look at them as reminders of what
35:01they were fighting for.
35:03The images are a comfort to the soldiers and their families who by and large get their updates on the
35:08war from newspapers or by word of mouth.
35:12Neither of which could adequately describe what would come next.
35:17U.S. General Edwin Sumner sends William French's division into battle.
35:22For most of these troops, this will be their first live action of the war.
35:27Awaiting them are two of D.H. Hill's rebel brigades, Rhodes Alabamians and Anderson's North Carolinians.
35:34These men had seen plenty of combat.
35:37They take control of an old wagon shortcut, a portion of it sunken through frequent use.
35:48The fight along the so-called sunken road quickly turns into a slaughter.
35:53D.H. Hill's veterans inflict 1,700 casualties on French's Union Division.
35:59Reinforcements pour in on both sides.
36:01The Union soldiers are intent on taking the sunken road for a simple reason.
36:05In short, the sunken road was only important because it was in the Union's way.
36:10It comprised the Confederate center.
36:12And if the Union broke through the sunken road, they could probably occupy the roads leading in and out of
36:18Sharpsburg,
36:18which would prevent the Confederate route of retreat if they met with disaster.
36:22For that same reason, the Confederates are intent on defending the sunken road.
36:27But the advantages of this position quickly turn into grave disadvantages.
36:32One of the reasons they're in there is at the very eastern edge is a high ground that blocks Union
36:38artillery
36:38from the other side of the creek from seeing them.
36:40So now they're safe from that artillery.
36:42But as the direction that they're facing, there's high ground to their front.
36:46So they don't have these broad fields of view to see the enemy coming,
36:50and they certainly don't have broad field of fire to engage them at range.
36:53It's only as the Union soldiers come over the rise that now you end up in this close quarters combat.
37:00The Rebel soldiers in the sunken road are trapped.
37:04Lee commits the last of his available reserves to extend Hill's right.
37:10French's reinforcements arrive led by Union General Israel Richardson.
37:16But then a Rebel officer mistakenly orders an about-face amid the battle's roar.
37:24All along the sunken road, it looks as if a general retreat has been ordered.
37:29Five regimens of Confederates begin to fall back toward Sharpsburg.
37:34Lee's center is now in grave danger of collapse.
37:37But then Richardson's Union advance is blunted by artillery from General James Longstreet at Piper Farm,
37:43and by sharp, ferocious counterattacks organized by D.H. Hill.
37:49As he did throughout Virginia, and now in Maryland, Lee adeptly moves his smaller units to stop McClellan's large blue
37:57tide.
37:57Richardson is then fatally wounded, and without his leadership, the Union advance grinds to another halt.
38:04With their eyes and ears, the generals struggle to understand the state of their armies in real time.
38:10We now know that at this point, victory is within reach for General McClellan.
38:15But at the time, he doesn't realize it.
38:1812,000 fresh soldiers arrive at the front.
38:21General McClellan uses them to bolster his shattered right flank.
38:25But if he had directed them towards the sunken road, in the center, he might have been able to deliver
38:30a decisive blow.
38:32Instead, the two sides would be caught in a relentless fight until around 1.30 p.m.,
38:37at which point, the rebels finally relent.
38:41They could do us little harm, and we were shooting them like sheep in a pen.
38:45In a few minutes, white rags were hoisted along the rebel line.
38:50Sergeant Charles A. Fuller, 61st New York Infantry.
38:56By the end of the fight, 5,600 men lay dead or wounded.
39:00The sunken road would soon take on a new name, the Bloody Lane.
39:04Antietam's battle toll is now 17,500 and climbing.
39:11While the firefight continued at Bloody Lane, the rest of Lee's army found itself on the ropes.
39:16But fortunately for them, Antietam Creek buffered them from the brunt of McClellan's forces.
39:22Lee's right flank is arguably his most critical.
39:26It's the closest to his escape route across the Potomac.
39:29Yet, by mid-morning, he has only 3,000 men to defend it.
39:34Across the creek, Ambrose Burnside's Ninth Corps waits.
39:38He has been told to prepare to launch a diversionary attack on the Confederate right
39:43to draw attention away from Hooker's assault on the left.
39:47He waits two hours for his orders to attack.
39:50This delay gives Lee time to shift crucial artillery to his vulnerable right flank.
39:56Burnside opts to divide his force.
39:59He sends one division under Isaac Rodman, three-quarters of a mile downstream, to cross at Snavely's Ford.
40:06His other divisions will be funneled across a 12-foot-wide bridge.
40:10High on a slope, 100 feet above, stands 400 Georgians backed by 12 cannon.
40:17Burnside's men will squeeze across the bridge at point-blank range.
40:22George Crook's Union Brigade leads the first charge.
40:25They emerge 350 yards upstream, but are propelled before reaching the bridge.
40:31James Neglo's brigade tries again, but is blasted into retreat before even reaching the bridge.
40:40Two hours later, another charge is made.
40:42This time, by Edward Ferrero's twin 51st.
40:46They win the bridge for the Union at last.
40:50Around this same time, Rodman's division makes it across Antietam Creek.
40:54Fearing they are about to be flanked, the Georgians finally fall back.
41:00For the third time today, Lee's army of Northern Virginia is on the verge of a resounding defeat.
41:12Lee has used up most of his reserves, and Union artillery has begun to bombard his escape route through Sharpsburg.
41:20What's more, the expected reinforcements he had previously ordered from Harpers Ferry, led by A.P. Hill, still have not
41:27arrived.
41:28Then, a reprieve.
41:30Burnside will need two full hours to march his 10,000 battered troops across the bridge over Antietam Creek.
41:36And when he finally approaches Lee's right flank, he cautiously holds two brigades back in reserve.
41:42He intends to cut off Lee's retreat.
41:44Has he committed enough troops to meet that objective?
41:48His one-mile-wide attack is initially successful with one division pushing towards the Harpers Ferry Road.
41:55While elements of two other brigades come to blows with D.R. Jones Confederates.
42:00Only Robert Toome's 700-man brigade is left to defend Lee's right flank.
42:06Many Confederates panic and run wild through the streets of Sharpsburg.
42:10But all is not lost for Lee.
42:13A.P. Hill's reinforcements are rapidly approaching the battlefield.
42:17Lee has impressed upon his subordinates the notion that everything needs to be done with urgency,
42:21and if you have any doubts, you attack.
42:23So, A.P. Hill does a forced march from Harpers Ferry.
42:28At 4 p.m., A.P. Hill's Light Division finally arrives after a sprint from Harpers Ferry.
42:34Despite their 17-mile march that day, Hill's exhausted rebels immediately strike Burnside's exposed left flank.
42:42Made up largely of new and inexperienced recruits, Burnside's troops stand in high corn and barely see what hits them.
42:52A.P. Hill's timely arrival saves Lee's army.
42:56But it is not enough to save the battle.
43:02The guns finally go quiet, but the 12 hours of savage fighting has claimed nearly a quarter of Lee's army.
43:09Though the fighting has ended, Lee defiantly remains on the field until the next day, ready for battle.
43:17McClellan considers an attack, but once again pauses, allowing Lee to slip back into Virginia.
43:23It's a decision that would come back to haunt him.
43:27So, who won the Battle of Antioch?
43:31Lee had been winning battle after battle, forcing the battle from the south back into the north,
43:35and then here comes the Union army, coming of age, fighting Lee to a standstill.
43:40The 19th century convention is like you win if you're hanging around, right?
43:44So Lee doesn't immediately leave, so there's kind of a Confederate argument that it isn't much of a victory.
43:49But did Lee really gain anything from the battle?
43:51You know, I think probably not.
44:00In the end, McClellan's army suffered more casualties.
44:04However, it was Lee's that retreated from the battlefield.
44:07But in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, one person's opinion mattered far more than anyone else's.
44:15That man was President Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln was intent on winning this war outright.
44:23Two months after Antietam, President Lincoln permanently relieves McClellan of his command.
44:29The President never forgave McClellan for his decision to allow Lee to return to Virginia without a fight.
44:36In this one day, more than 3,600 men were killed.
44:4219,000 more were wounded or captured.
44:45More died at Antietam than Pearl Harbor, D-Day, or 9-11.
44:51And the impact of Antietam would reverberate far beyond Sharpsburg, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.
44:58The Civil War would see thousands of photographers producing millions of portraits in their studios for soldiers, for civilians, for
45:07people who simply wanted to have their image.
45:09Photographers also recorded about 10,000 outdoor documentary photos of battlefields, of camps, of headquarters and whatnot.
45:16But they never seemed to achieve what a photojournalist might want, actual human carnage.
45:23Then came photographer Alexander Gardner's series of more than 80 pictures, taken just after the Battle of Antietam.
45:31His piercing images were put on display in New York and adapted for print in newspapers around the country.
45:36Depictions of the bloody lane, for one, cut through any words that may have been written in the press or
45:42in letters home from the front.
45:44They are as arresting now as they were more than 150 years ago.
45:49When Gardner snaps those images of Antietam, it's a shock to the system for people to see those horrific images
45:57of the bloated bodies, the dead lined up in rows, just as if they fell marching, you know, in a
46:03parade.
46:04You see mangled bodies, you see bodies missing limbs or bodies split open or chewed open by hogs or local
46:11animals before the burial parties could attend to them.
46:14These photos absolutely shocked the nation. One New York Times reporter said if Mr. Brady, for whom Alexander Gardner was
46:21working, hadn't dragged the bodies to our doorsteps, he has done something very like it.
46:27Now, some people saw photos like this and would have seen, look at this terrible situation. We need to end
46:32this war.
46:33And others, including Abraham Lincoln, said, no, we must continue this struggle so that these dead shall not have died
46:39in vain.
46:43The fallout from Antietam would also provoke one of the most consequential actions made by any president in our nation's
46:50history.
46:52Sensing a change in the war's momentum, Lincoln seizes the moment to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that would
47:01free the enslaved bound within the Confederate States,
47:04opening the door to hundreds of thousands of African Americans who would go on to join the fight in the
47:10heroic effort to transform American society,
47:14but also reframing the purpose of this great war.
47:19Up to this point, it's been preserve the Union. And now Lincoln goes, that's not enough.
47:24We can't go back to the Union that we were. It needs to be something different.
47:27We got to make sure that we go back to those fundamental values of all men, all people are created
47:32equal.
47:33From here on out, the war is binary. Either the Union will not survive as it was in the past,
47:38or the Confederacy will be destroyed for having taken this path.
47:42September 17th, 1862, remains the bloodiest single day in American history.
47:48The memory of that autumn day still hangs in the mists over Antietam battlefield,
47:54and with more than 450 acres now preserved for posterity.
47:59The stories of Dunker Church, the sunken road, and the battle for a simple stone bridge will not be forgotten.
48:08These are places where people fought and bled and died.
48:12In most cases, the dead were buried wherever they fell.
48:16We estimate that there are thousands and thousands of remains still on Civil War battlefields that we don't even know
48:22about.
48:22This is why I support battlefield preservation.
48:24I don't know how we understand the United States without preserving these places.
48:30These are truly hallowed grounds.
48:39From the chaotic Battle of Shiloh to the blood-soaked fields of Antietam,
48:45the critical siege of Vicksburg and the decisive Battle of Gettysburg,
48:48stay with us here on PBS America as we explore the pivotal battles of the American Civil War.
49:04The
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