War letters, 1862-1865, of John Chipman Gray ... and John Codman Ropes ... with portraits

17 September 1862

Battle of Antietam

WAR LETTERS, 1862-1865 9

My pear Moruer, —I have received no letter from home since last Saturday. I hope you are all well, and will write to me soon. You must not be surprised if you do not hear from me very regularly after this, as we shall probably move in a few days, I suppose on Winchester. Probably by the time this reaches you there will be no need of secrecy; if it happens to get home before we dd move, say nothing about it. The movement is rather a surprise to all here and I have yet to see the officer to whom it is not an unwelcome one. They all dread a winter campaign. Whatever the papers may say about the eagerness of the army to move is utterly false. It is not believed either that McClellan moves with good will, but that he is forced on by outside pres- sure, just as he was in the Peninsular after McDowell’s.corps was taken away. Even if the rebels abandon Winchester or make a stand there and are defeated, it will be all but impossible for McClellan to follow them up the valley at this season, and | tell them here and I feel sure rightly, that a great victory at Win- chester, if it is not followed up by a close pursuit, will make the public feel no better than they do, but rather more discontented. You remember that the effect of the great battle at Antietam was to produce a state of feeling at home in which there was quite as much disgust as gratification.

IO WAR LETTERS, 1862-1865

Last Monday General Gordon rode up with Walter Curtis (whom I think I mentioned in my last letter as being here look- ing for a place on this staff) and myself to the field of Antietam which is about thirteen miles from here; before we got back we must have ridden thirty miles. It was very hard on my horse (I shouldn’t have gone if I had known how hard it would be) but I was not nearly so tired as I expected to be; those McClellan saddles are very comfortable and my horse has a very pleasant gait. We rode all over the field and got a general idea of the operations, but as I had neglected to read any account of the battle it was not so clear as it would otherwise have been. Thousands of people have visited the field since the battle and the marks of the fight have been greatly obliterated; still much remains. I saw hundreds of dead horses lying unburied and there were several unexploded shells lying about. In the wood where part of Gordon’s brigade stood during the fight and in which General Mansfield * was killed, I could not see a tree of the smallest size which did not have one mark at least of shot or shell and there were very many which had over twenty. I picked up a bible leaf on the edge of these woods, which I en- close, the smallest relic I could find. In one road where the

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to you today. (Two secesh prisoners have just arrived, so I leave off for the present.) (The general is examining them at his tent, so I go on.) We stayed at Maryland Heights till Thursday last [Oct. 30], when we received notice that we were to move to this place; it was not stated how long we were to stay but it probably will be for some time, if not all winter. We are now just outside of the town of Sharpsburg. The town is all one large hospital for men wounded at the battle of Antietam, and it is almost im- possible to get a house in town, but we hope to have one soon. The place where the hardest fighting was done is not more than a mile from town, and there is not a building in Sharpsburg which does not bear the marks of artillery fire from our batteries and those of the rebels. Some brick houses have a great hole knocked out of the corner, some have a large hole in the roof, and some have the side for a yard square filled with smaller holes, either made by grape shot or the fragments of shells exploding. ‘There are half a dozen solid shot and unexploded shell now lying about our tents. 7 On Thursday night we had orders to move and started about nine or ten o'clock in the evening. ‘The general and myself at the head of the column, the servants behind us (we have seven in all, three white and four black) on the other horses, and the regiments and wagon trains behind us. We went along for about four miles without a halt. It was a beautiful soft moonlight night and General Gordon and I rode along talking law. We stopped in a little house by the roadside and remained there about an hour for the regiments in the rear to closeup. It was a little low cabin looking like the woodcutter’s lodge on the stage, with an enormous fire-place, a man and woman, a sulky big girl and a shy little one and a small boy in artillery uniform. The woman fed us on pies, ‘apple and quince butter’ — she said she had no ‘cow butter’ — and coffee. It was a pleasant little rest by the wayside; we marched on about four miles more to An- tietam Creek and halted again. There we met a Lieutenant

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First, however, there has been published a Map of the Battle- field of Antietam, which I will send you if you desire it. I see you have moved from your position and may be busy with operations in the face of the enemy — so you can’t compare it as you could a little while ago with the actual field.