Wren’s men fanned out and began to scramble up the hill. As the ground widened, the captain sent back for more skirmishers. Brigadier General Sturgis personally sent more men to assist.

The skirmishers scrounged the far hillside for souvenirs as they proceeded. They discovered the remains of the 2nd Georgia in a slight entrenchment near the top of the hill. Over 40 Rebels had fallen as a unit in near-perfect formation. Lieutenant Colonel Holmes lay five paces behind his color guard, riddled with bullets.

Union soldiers set upon the colonel’s beautiful dress uniform; one stole Holme’s expensive gold watch, others cut the gilt buttons off his tunic. Captain Joseph A. Gilmour claimed a shoulder knot. Two men pulled the polished boots off his feet, then callously flipped a coin to see who would have the matched pair.

Corporal Dye Davis of Company B happened upon a dead Confederate whose haversack bulged with johnny cakes. Dye coldly jerked the haversack free from the dead man and poured its contents into his own sack. He started to munch a chunk of the captured cornbread as the company moved out. A friend reprimanded him, commenting that he could not eat anything that came from a corpse.

“Damn ‘em, man,” Dye retorted through a mouthful of bread. “The Johnny is dead, but the johnny cakes is no dead.” He kept eating away.

The Federal regiments down by the creek, on the other hand, acted like vanquished troops. The stubborn Georgians, besides holding the entire corps at bay, inflicting severe casualties and causing the frustrated Yankees to needlessly expend an inordinate amount of ammunition upon inferior numbers, had scored an emotional victory. General Burnside had won his bridge–ever after to bear his name–but the crossing had been so delayed as to render his victory meaningless.

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John M. Priest teaches at South Hagerstown High School and resides in Boonsboro, Md. He is the author of the recently published Antietam: The Soldier’s Battle by White Mane Publishing Company, from which the article was adapted. As supplemental reading, try Landscape Turned Red, by Stephen W. Sears or The Gleam of Bayonets by James V. Murfin.

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