In 1899 Douglas had wondered in a manuscript memoir why Burnside had not simply swept across Antietam Creek. “Go and look at it,” Douglas urged, “and tell me if you don’t think Burnside and his corps might have executed a hop, skip, and jump and landed on the other side. One thing is certain, they might have waded it that day without wetting their waist belts in any place.” That criticism did not take root until after Douglas’ memoirs were finally published in 1940. Since Douglas took part in the battle and grew up only a few miles from the creek, however, scholars took him at his word without accepting his challenge to test the depth of the stream. The National Park Service even mounted a plaque on the eastern end of Burnside’s Bridge etched with Douglas’ snide comment.

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If Antietam Creek was such an insignificant watercourse, one might wonder why local farmers had established any fords in that vicinity in the first place; after all, cattle hardly need as shallow a crossing as infantry. Lately, more careful historians have demonstrated that Douglas owned a penchant for hyperbole and invention, and his challenge to examine the creek turns out to have been pure bluff. Antietam Creek drains four counties in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and the spot where Burnside was asked to cross lay three miles short of the mouth, where it empties into the Potomac as a sizable stream. At times it rolls in a perfect torrent just down­stream from Burnside’s Bridge, and only the most experienced whitewater raftsmen would dare test it then. Even with the sedimentary accumulation behind a postwar dam just downstream from the bridge, the creek lies too deep and muddy today, and its banks too steep, for the criteria of Captain Duane’s “good ford” for infantry.

A great deal of evidence confirms that it did serve as an effective military barrier in 1862. A 5-foot-6-inch Rhode Island lieutenant found the creek “breast deep” even at Snavely’s Ford, where he crossed, and a quarter of a century after the battle a New York Zouave who navigated the same ford remembered that it was at least waist deep.

Colonel George Crook’s brigade formed the upstream extremity of Burnside’s line, where the creek should theoretically have been even shallower than at the bridge. Crook thrashed about for more than two hours before he found one spot where a few men could wade the creek one at a time. The historian of Joseph Kershaw’s Confederate division acknowledged that the creek was “not fordable for some distance above the Potomac,” and concluded that it could be waded without difficulty only at the upstream end of Lee’s defensive line, well above Burnside’s front. Prior to the publication of Douglas’ book, the impassability of the creek was never questioned.

Catton’s repetition of Douglas’ groundless comment soon encouraged two more historians to assail Burnside’s Antietam performance. In a 1956 article for Civil War History, Martin Schenck accused Burnside of wasting five hours in carrying the bridge. Schenck founded his indictment on McClellan’s revised report, in which he claimed that he issued Burnside attack orders at 8 a.m.

“The report clearly states that the order was issued at 8 a.m.,” Schenck wrote, but he ignored McClellan’s first report, in which McClellan admitted that Burnside received no orders until about 10 a.m. It was only in 1863, as McClellan tried to improve his public image, that he asserted he had sent Burnside’s instructions two hours earlier. Burnside’s report, which Schenck did not consult, timed the arrival at 10. Brigadier General Jacob Cox, who was standing with Burnside at IX Corps headquarters, ultimately concluded that the order reached them near 10 a.m.

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