CHAPTER XXII
 

HE month of September, 1862, was the most
eventful in the history of Washington
County. Two battles were fought in the
County during that month, and one of
them the most hotly contested and one of the most
sanguinary of all the battles of the Civil AVar. In¬
deed, the battle of Sharpsburg may rank with the
decisive battles of the world. It was one of those
battles whicli decided the fate of a nation and
changed the course of history. Had General Lee
gained a decisive victory on the field of Antietam,
in three days more he would have been in AA'ash¬
ington, and have dictated terms of peace which
would have given the Confederate States of Amer¬
ica a place among the independent nations of the
world.

d'he armies whicli confronted each other at
Antietam on the 17th day of September, 1862,
formed a striking contrast. Lee's army was com¬
posed of about thirty-five thousand men, weary
and exhausted from long marches, with feet torn
and bleeding from marching barefooted in a rough
and rocky country, clad in rags, famished and
weakened by disease brought on by subsistence upon
green fruit and ears of green corn eaten raw. But
they were flushed with victory, and between them
and their commander there existed that confidence
whieli multiplies the efl'ectiveness of an army.
Victualed, equipped, clad, and fresh as the Feder¬
al Army which opposed them, these men in the
hands of Lee, Jackson, Hill and Longstreet would
have been invincible. The army of General Mc¬
Clellan contained eighty-seven thousand men,
fresh, well fed and admirably equipped with every
appliance of war which the unlimited resources of
 

the Government could command. But its mate¬
rial was heterogenous. Many were new recruits
who had never yet been in an engagement; those
who yvere veterans had been serving under incom¬
petent and discredited commanders, and were dis¬
pirited. Gen. McClellan had taken command but
a short time before. He did not know the men,
and could have no confidence in them, and it is
likely that this want of confidence saved Lee's
army from annihilation, for McClellan deemed it
necessary to keep a large force in reserve, and so
at the close of the engagement there were about
twenty-seven thousand men who had not fired a
shot.

If McClellan had felt safe in bringing this
reserve into action, Lee could not have escaped,
for his army was worn out and decimated and his
ammunition exhausted. McClellan doubtless un¬
der-estimated the fighting qualities of his army,
and missed the opportunity of his life by permit¬
ting, Lee to escape. But who shall judge him?
He knew that a repulse would be almost as disas¬
trous to Lee as a defeat. He knew that his army
alone stood between the Confederates and AA^ashing-
ton, and that the consequences of a defeat of his
undisciplined forces would be too momentous to
be lightly risked. The whole month of September
was a time of intense excitement and alarm for the
people of Hagerstown. The fortunes of the Con¬
federacy were at the flood. The prevailing
imjiression in the South was that Maryland was
a friendly state to them and was ready to fall into
the arms of the Confederacy whenever the duress
of the Northern Army was removed. This impres-
.sion of the sympathy for the South was entirely