Battle of Shepherdstown

Edmonds was right. Early in the afternoon, a detachment of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters under Captain John B. Isler arrived at Boteler’s Ford. At about 5:30, Isler received orders to cross the ford and attack the Rebels. His skirmish line was so long and scattered that Isler could only round up 60 of his sharpshooters. They had some difficulty finding the ford, but fortunately they were covered by the 4th Michigan while they slogged through the river. The Confederate gunfire, though brisk, only hit four men during the crossing. The 4th followed Isler’s men across the river, and they climbed up the bluff overlooking the ford and set up picket lines.

Pendleton had responded to earlier threats by dispatching several hundred men to bolster the batteries on his left and sending another detachment to strengthen his right. He had never commanded infantry and kept such a hands-off approach that he never even asked his brigade commanders how many men they had. Had he asked, he would have learned that he had about 600 men. Only half of Lawton’s Brigade was left after the Maryland fighting, and Lawton himself was wounded. Many of the men still with the brigade lacked weapons. The 9th Virginia of Armistead’s Brigade was down to 50 or 60 men. Reinforcing the flanks left Pendleton 300 men to protect Boteler’s Ford.

When Pendleton’s battery commanders ran low on ammunition and pleaded for him to allow a withdrawal, he ordered them to hold on a bit longer. Dusk was near, and he thought they could soon withdraw quietly under the cover of darkness without tipping off the Yankees to their desperate situation.

An exhausted Confederate gunner, whose battery of smoothbores was pulled back from the range of the Yankees’ rifled pieces, had stretched out on the ground to grab some sleep. He awoke to find the woods across the river ‘ablaze with the fire of heavy guns.’ Worse, a battery of 20-pounder Parrotts had found their range ‘in a most uncomfortable manner,’ and it looked like ‘a million’ Yankee infantrymen were massing to cross the river. His comrades were quickly ‘mixed in helter skelter race for the road’ which was jammed with ‘men, guns, horses, limber chests without the guns, caissons, officers on horseback and on foot, all in a confused mass and all making the best possible time to….the rear of General Lee’s army.’

The Confederate infantry near the river broke under the bombardment and the advance of Isler’s sharpshooters. Pendleton found out only when he saw some of them speeding by him toward the rear. Just two of his staff officers were present, and he sent one to confirm the tale of disaster at the ford and the other to supervise the withdrawal of the guns. Pendleton found Brig. Gen. Roger A. Pryor, who was commanding the division usually led by Maj. Gen. Richard Anderson, who had been wounded, and told him what had happened. Pryor was reluctant to order his battered division to mount a counterattack in the dark and sent Pendleton to find divisional commander Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood. Pendleton rode on alone, looking for aid from Hood or anyone else with more authority. His desperation and anxiety grew to near panic by the time he located Lee and awakened the commander. The brigadier had not seen a trace of any of his guns for hours, and as far as he knew every one of them had been taken.

As Pendleton disappeared into the gathering night, his officers and men struggled to drag their guns and caissons out of danger. Captain Maurin found the only road out was swept by enemy fire, so he was ‘obliged to cut across fields and fences…without a guide.’ One of his Parrott rifles, pulled by exhausted and hungry horses, fell behind and was abandoned in the dark. Maurin sent Lieutenant R.P. Landry to lead the gun to safety, but after much delay he found it blocked by a stretch of impenetrable woods. Hearing the shouts of Yankee soldiers getting nearer, Landry spiked the gun and headed back to join the battery.

Three other Confederate batteries lost guns and caissons, as well as several horses each. Luckily for them, the Union sharpshooters and volunteers who crossed the river were ordered to pull back to the Maryland side. They had been unable to climb the cliffs to the Confederate artillery positions until nearly all of their guns had been removed. Southern gunners managed to save all but four of the 44 guns that General Pendleton thought were lost.