Two Miserable Presidents by Steve Sheinkin Page B

the morning on September 13, a group of Indiana soldiers sat down to grab a quick rest. Corporal Barton Mitchell was sitting under a tree when he noticed a piece of paper lying in the grass a few feet away. He picked up the paper and found that it was wrapped around three cigars. Barton was thrilled—he sent his friend for matches to light the cigars. Then he unrolled the piece of paper. “As I read, each line became more interesting,” he said. “I forgot those cigars.”

    Special Orders, No. 191
Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia
… The army will resume its march
tomorrow, taking the Hagerstown road.
General Jackson’s command will form
the advance …

    This was General Lee’s entire plan! Some careless Southern officer must have wrapped a copy of the plan around his cigars and dropped it there by accident. The letter described exactly where each part of Lee’s army was and where they were headed. And best of all, it showed that Lee’s army was spread out all over the place—completely unprepared for battle.

    â€œNow I know what to do!” shouted McClellan when he saw the letter. “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.”
    Southern spies told Lee that McClellan had his plans. Lee rushed messages to all his commanders to gather as quickly as possible at a town called Sharpsburg. When Lee got there he pointed to the high ground above Antietam Creek and said, “We will make our stand on these hills.”
    McClellan, meanwhile, moved so slowly that he missed a golden opportunity to attack before Lee was ready. By September 17, Lee had about 40,000 soldiers at Antietam Creek. Little Mac had about 80,000.

    Families hid in their cellars and frightened farmers cleared their cows and horses from the fields.
    Into the Awful Tornado
    W hen the armies woke before sunrise on September 17, a milky mist covered the fields near Antietam Creek. Sleepy soldiers began the day by wiping the dew from their rifles.
    A group of Texas soldiers had just begun cooking breakfast (their first hot meal in three days) when they were ordered into battle. “I have never seen a more disgusted bunch of boys and mad as hornets,” one soldier said.
    Union soldiers were building fires and boiling coffee when the
first Southern shell came screaming into camp. A soldier named Albert Monroe said: “Every one dropped whatever he had in his hands, and looked around the group to see whose head was missing.”
    No one’s was—yet. But another huge and horrible battle was under way.
    All day the armies charged at each other, driving one another back and forth across a large cornfield and a dirt road that became known as the “Bloody Lane.” Entire rows of men were cut down as they charged at enemy guns, and arms and legs were blasted thirty feet into the air. “A man but a few paces from me is struck squarely in the face by a solid shot,” recalled George Kimball of Massachusetts. “Fragments of the poor fellow’s head come crashing into my face and fill me with disgust.” Kimball wiped his face and continued fighting.
    After a few hours, soldiers said they could have walked across the battlefield on fallen bodies without ever touching the ground. “A savage continual thunder that cannot compare to any sound I ever heard” was how Charles Johnson of New York described the fight at Antietam.
    â€œThe earth and sky seemed to be on fire,” said a Texan named W.R. Hamby.
    â€œIt seemed as if a million bees were singing in the air,” said Charles Tanner of Delaware.
    Another soldier spoke of “the awful tornado of battle.”
    In the middle of the storm was a Union army nurse named Clara Barton. Hunched over to avoid the flying metal, Barton raced from one wounded soldier to the next. When she lifted one wounded man’s head to give him a drink of water, a bullet ripped through