5. The battle which Franklin was not • al lowed to fight must be mentioned. It has been noted that Smith's action was paralyzed by tak ing away a third of his force for service else where. About noon Slocum, with the other di vision, reached the field, and two brigades were at once formed in line to carry the woods around the church; but again the reserve brigade was ordered off. Franklin urged with all his strength to have a grand assault made with his whole corps on Lee's centre, crippled and worn out with half a day's fighting and slaughter. With relatively fresh troops and French and Richardson to aid, it is most prob able that few Confederates would have crossed into Shepherdstown. But Sumner refused to permit the movement; still, Franklin was so urgent that he referred the decision to McClel lan, but with so strong a veto that McClellan deferred to him and sanctioned the refusal. Both credited Lee with double or treble his actual numbers, and considered the terrible re sistance, not as a proof that it could not be continued, but that any force which assailed him went to destruction. This refusal forms another of the might-have-beens of the battle, with some peculiarly poignant personal tragedy involved.
6. The action of the left under Burnside is an even more acute personal question. His pe culiar position has already been noted. About 7 A.m. he received an order to hold himself in readiness to carry by assault a stone ridge across the Antietam about a mile southeast of Sharpsburg. About 10, when the First and Twelfth corps and Sedgwick's division were out of the fight, he received another order to carry the bridge and the heights beyond and advance on the rear of Sharpsburg. He turned it over to Cox, who ordered a brigade to storm the bridge, Rodman to cross by a ford one third of a mile below, and the two to carry the heights and unite there. At best this could not be done in a moment, and the movement seems a covering rather than an aggressive one. But Crook missed the bridge and could not get back to it under fire: Rodman missed the ford and was two hours or so crossing under fire; a fresh storming party finally carried the bridge, Crook crossed some companies above and others at the bridge, and Rodman and the rest united about 1 P.M., when the battle on the right was virtually over. Meantime Sturgis'
division had run out of ammunition and was reported unfit for duty; it was replaced by Willcox's (Burnside assisted in this), and at 3 P.M. the corps was again ready to move, though much damaged by the constant Confederate ar tillery fire. The right wing broke Jones' divi sion and gained the suburbs of Sharpsburg; but the left was strongly checked, and the two wings grew widely separated. Meantime A. P. Hill came upon the field, having marched 17 miles in seven hours. He took Rodman's di vision in its undefended flank (the second mis adventure of the sort that day), and Rodman was killed, while a concentric fire mowed down his men. The losses of the corps were 2,349; a fearful total, almost exactly those of Sedg wick's division. A panic was averted by Scam mon, who changed front and checked Hill for a little; Cox called up Sturgis and made head for a while: but at length the corps was obliged to withdraw to the cover of the hills that border the Antietam.
The Union losses were 12,410: 2,108 killed, 9,549 wounded, and 753 missing. More men were killed on this one day than on any other of the Civil War. The Confederate losses were never known with exactness; but as 2,700 of their dead were counted and buried by the Union forces, and many had previously been buried by their comrades, the total cannot have been less than the Federal. The next day Lee retreated across the Potomac unopposed: the failure to pursue him was one of the griev ances against McClellan later, but most of his generals concurred with him. Although Lee had escaped destruction, he had none the less failed in his campaign.
Bibliography.— The Count of Paris' tory of the Civil War) (Vol. II, 1876), is from the standpoint of a strong admirer of McClel lan, whose staff he was on; F. W. Palfrey's 'The Antietam and (1882), from a lieutenant-colonel of Sedgwick's divi sion, is sharply critical of nearly all the Union generals; John C. Ropes' (Story of the Civil War) (Vol. I, 1894), is from a noted military critic; Michie's 'General McClellan' (1901), is from a distinguished engineer officer and pro fessor at West Point; the account in 'Battles and Leaders of the Civil (New York 1884-88), is by Gen. J. D. Cox. Consult also (McClellan's Own (1866), and Hays, H. A., and Its Bridges' (1910).