Small Arms
Throughout the war, the Union infantrymen were usually better armed than their Rebel opponents. Antietam was no exception. The most common shoulder arm of the Yankee foot soldier was the Springfield rifle. This does not mean that there was not some degree of diversity of arms in the Union ranks. For example, some units such as the 7th West Virginia were armed with the British-made Enfield rifled musket. The 20th New York carried the U.S. Model 1841 Mississippi rifle with saber bayonet. The New York regiments of the Irish Brigade were issued the Model 1842 .69-caliber smoothbore musket. This was actually a favored weapon with the commander of the brigade, since it could fire ‘buck and ball’ (a load of buckshot and musket ball) at close range with deadly effect.

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Correspondence sent from an ordnance officer in the Army of the Potomac to the chief of ordnance in Washington several weeks after the battle indicates that 5,000 smoothbore muskets were still being carried by elements of McClellan’s army.

The Confederate foot soldiers in Lee’s army fielded a wider variety of weapons. These included several types of rifled muskets, such as the .57-caliber Enfield and the .58-caliber Springfield. Some of the men carried .54-caliber rifled muskets, including the U.S. Model 1855 Harpers Ferry rifle, the U.S. Model 1841 Mississippi rifle and the Austrian Lorenz rifle. Captured weapons, picked up on the battlefields of Virginia, helped alleviate Lee’s deficit in arms. However, one estimate places the number of .69-caliber smoothbore muskets in the Army of Northern Virginia at about 30 percent. Although much is made of this lack of new weaponry, research shows that most of the opposing fire at Antietam was at a distance of around 100 to 200 yards, where smoothbore firearms were reasonably accurate. In the end, supplying the types of ammunition needed for these weapons was a logistical nightmare for the Confederate ordnance department.

‘Artillery Hell’
Field artillery played a major tactical role at Antietam. Indeed, because of the destruction wrought by the armies’ long arms, Antietam has been aptly nicknamed ‘Artillery Hell.’ The Army of the Potomac had the advantage both in quantity and quality. Reports of the number of Union guns engaged in the battle vary from 286 to 302. The main type of artillery in McClellan’s arsenal was the 12-pounder Napoleon, the workhorse of the army. There were 108 of these guns employed in the fight. Accurate up to one mile, they were also deadly when firing canister at shorter ranges. Napoleons were used en masse with awful effect to break up several Confederate attacks on the north end of the battlefield in the morning phase. A significant portion of the Union artillery consisted of state-of-the-art long-range rifled guns such as the 10- and 20-pounder Parrott. Forty-two of the former and 30 of the latter pieces were brought to bear on the Confederate lines with deadly effect. Fifty-seven Union batteries were fielded on that bloody Wednesday.

Union artillery chief Henry Hunt wrote that, like other parts of McClellan’s army, the artillery arm was ‘organized on the march’ and in the intervals of conflict. In fact, Hunt had to reorganize the artillery just weeks before Antietam. Logistical problems existed, and many batteries were short of men, horses, guns and other equipment. McClellan had suffered losses on the Peninsula, and Pope’s disaster at Second Manassas included the loss of 30 guns captured by the Confederates. Hunt relieved many of these deficiencies within a very short time.

At Antietam he still faced an organizational challenge. The batteries from elements of Pope’s army were assigned to the corps. Conversely, McClellan preferred attaching three or four batteries per division. He redistributed the batteries to the divisions of the I Corps but left the XII Corps with the system previously used under Pope. Essentially, infantry division commanders (and occasionally brigade commanders) had control of the artillery under them. About one-third of the Union batteries at Antietam were commanded by lieutenants. Accordingly, these lower-ranking officers deferred to infantry commanders for the tactical deployment of their cannons. Therefore, it was hard for the Union artillery to be massed at the tactical level, although in some cases this happened at Antietam on an ad hoc basis.

The Confederates had around 246 pieces of field artillery at Sharpsburg. The arsenal consisted of a hodgepodge of different model cannons, including 41 of the obsolete Model 1841 6-pounders. These Mexican War–era pieces were effective only at short range and threw a very weak punch. Lee had only 27 12-pounder Napoleons, and rifled guns were at a premium. In contrast to the Federals, the Confederates had only four 20-pounder Parrott rifles and 36 of the 10-pounders. Compounding Lee’s problems was the fact that of the 59 batteries present, only five were uniform as to gun type. Lee was also bedeviled by inferior ammunition. A large number of fuzes and shells exploded prematurely, or not at all.

Like its Yankee counterpart, Lee’s artillery was also in a state of reorganization. But like the rest of his command, the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia was better organized for tactical application. Prior to Sharpsburg, Lee had assigned one artillery battalion, generally consisting of five or six batteries, to each of his infantry divisions. Longstreet’s corps had a battalion attached to it. One for Jackson would come later. A reserve of four battalions and miscellaneous batteries was available for the army’s general support. Despite the mixed quality of cannons, poor ammunition and other supply problems, Lee’s artillery, as evidenced by Colonel S.D. Lee’s Battalion near the Dunker Church, was still effective at massing guns and supporting the infantry.

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