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On the battle lines at Antietam, Brigadier General Winfield Scott Hancock proved himself the kind of inspiring commander who could have won the battle for the Union. Why didn't his superiors let him try?
By Terry Shulman,
CIVIL WAR TIMES ILLUSTRATED, October 1993
Leading the Union army advance, a tall, steely-eyed brigadier general named Winfield Scott Hancock directed four regiments through knee-deep water toward the rising clatter of rifle fire and the boom of heavy guns. Once across the stream, Hancock ordered his forces into line and then trotted up in front of the 49th Pennsylvania Infantry, his lead regiment. "Men," he proclaimed, "I am about to lead you into the presence of the enemy." He paused, gesturing grandly toward the colors. "But stand by the old flag today, and it will be alright!"
He had been making similar pronouncements all morning, erring on one occasion by telling the 49th's men that if they were "brave and true," it would probably be, as he put it, "their last battle." The remark did not quiet the regiment's already shattered nerves, which were frayed to near the breaking point after having marched for six hours to the quickening crack and thud of rifle and artillery fire. That morning Hancock had encountered a colonel, paralyzed with fright, cowering at the bottom of a sinkhole. Sighting his superior, the panic-stricken officer snapped to attention. "General Hancock!" he exclaimed. "I beg your pardon, General. I feel ashamed to be caught in this position. It is my first fight, sir. I await your orders. I will follow you anywhere!"
The colonel's predicament made Hancock laugh. But later, with his Pennsylvanians on the brink of battle, he wanted to leave his troops little doubt he was a serious man, intent on serious business. Shouting his units forward, Hancock wheeled his horse and dashed to the ridgeline, leaving the 49th's huzzahs hanging dispiritedly in his wake.
The fight began at dawn on the outskirts of Sharpsburg. From the ridge crest, Hancock could see the paths of destruction both armies had hewn since then, scorched fields and scarred earth that graphically outlined the battle's progress. It was easy to make out the course of the Federal army's initial thrust, an attack by Major General Joseph Hooker's I Corps that ended in a farm plot known thereafter as "the Cornfield," a spot where the harvest was supplanted by windrows of mangled corpses. Next, the Union's XII Corps attacked, gaining ground over the same field with equally spectacular losses. Major General Edwin Vose Sumner's II Corps followed that up with an assault in a once nameless tangle of trees and brush, a spot later called the "West Woods." There, the commander of one II Corps division, Major General John Sedgwick, saw half his men annihilated.
It was midday. Trailing Hancock on foot, the 49th Pennsylvania's troops wearily hauled themselves up the ridge toward the sound of falling artillery shells, rounds tearing up the ground immediately in front of them. As they marched, about 1,300 yards to the south, the men of another outfit, the Union army's "Irish Brigade," blasted Confederate regiments seeking shelter in the worn down farm lane called the "Sunken Road" or "Bloody Lane," losing hundreds of comrades in the process. More than 1, 100 yards to the south and west, remnants of the XII Corps, old Brigadier General George S. Greene's men, ran for their lives after having to give up a sizeable foothold in the West Woods for want of reinforcements.
Between the troops Hancock led and the disastrous scenes in the West Woods and the body-strewn Cornfield sat another tree lot prosaically named the "East Woods." As Hancock's regiments approached on the double-quick, the battle roaring, the scene in the trees horrified the most callous veterans. Survivors of Sedgwick's debacle, those lucky enough to have emerged standing, wandered aimlessly among corpses. Confederate shells burst in the treetops, wreaking havoc on the masses of running, walking, crawling soldiers below.
As the 49th reached the scene of the fighting, Hancock himself stood out from the chaos, immaculately attired, a clean white shirt peeking out from behind his uniform coat. At that moment he appeared to one soldier "all alive," galloping back and forth while hurrying his regiments to the protection of vulnerable batteries set up along the edge of the East Woods. Edward Harlan of the 124th Pennsylvania could not help but notice Hancock, especially because Hancock's mount had almost trampled him to death. Riding from one end of Harlan's unit to the other, Hancock suddenly targeted the anxious private, who had spent most of the morning trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the encroaching holocaust.
"To what regiment do you belong?" Hancock inquired of the wide-eyed Harlan.
"The 124th Pennsylvania."
"Where is your colonel?" Hancock demanded.
"He is wounded and taken from the field."
"Where is your lieutenant colonel?"
"Our regiment is divided and he must be with the other part," Harlan lied, not wanting to be blamed for the fact that the regiment actually had no lieutenant colonel.
"Where is your major?"
"Don't know."
"Who in hell is in command of you?"
"Captain Yarnell."
"Send him to me."
Harlan left the ranks and quickly retrieved his captain, who at the sight of Hancock's insignia snapped to attention. Did he command these men? the brigadier wanted to know. Yes, Yarnell answered, he did.
"You are a Pennsylvania man and I am General Hancock, a Pennsylvania man, and if you are not with your command I will take charge of you, and will ask you to support my battery."
At this, Hancock wheeled his horse to address the men. None of his regiments had ever lost a piece of artillery, he warned, and he did not intend to lose one now.
As he delivered his harangue, the regiment looked on in wonder. It would have been hard for anyone accustomed to the generals so typical of this volunteer army not to have been impressed by an officer of such obvious effulgence. Hancock stood six feet two inches tall with hooded blue eyes and finely chiseled features capped off by a mustache and goatee. French nobleman and sometime Union army staff officer Regis de Trobriand considered hime "one of the handsomest men in the United States Army ... tall in stature, robust in figure, with movements of easy dignity. His head, shaded by thick hair of a light chestnut color, strikes one favorably from the first by the regularity of his features and the engaging expression which is habitual to him. His manners are very polite. His voice is pleasant, and his speech as agreeable as his looks. Such is Hancock in repose.
"In action he is entirely different. Dignity gives way to activity, his voice loud, his eyes are on fire, his blood kindles, and his bearing is that of a man carried away by passion -- the character of bravery."
It would be somewhat harder to capture Hancock as the rank and file saw him. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought in Virginia the following spring, a private would come close, however, describing Hancock as he "rode down the line, tall and magnificent ... not a muscle quivering ... looking us in the face [he] said, 'Gentlemen' -- he called his soldiers gentlemen -- 'we are left to keep them in check until the second line is formed.' ... I became a hero by that man's influence. No Plutarch could have done that for me."
At a similar moment, no one could have wished more devoutly for an inspiring visit from Hancock than Private Benjamin Franklin Clarkson. Confederate batteries along the Hagerstown Pike, west of the Cornfield, had Clarkson and the rest of the 49th pinned down in front of some Union guns north of that blood-soaked farm plot. To the private's amazement, acting regimental commander Major Thomas Huling fled and for some time had been observed cowering behind a massive oak tree in the East Woods. As the battle seemed to reach a crescendo, Clarkson's company lay "kiss[ing] the ground trying to escape the flying missiles" and watching enemy legions swarm into the Cornfield and head straight for them.
Clarkson prayed. He had been praying for much of the morning, to some avail, as he was still alive and unhurt. Then, as two more Confederate batteries opened up on the helpless company, Hancock suddenly appeared before him.
"Men, who put you out here!" Hancock demanded.
"Our major!" one soldier shouted back.
"Where is your major?"
"Over there behind that large white oak tree in our rear."
"Tell him to come here instantly."
A soldier broke from the ranks and retrieved the panic-stricken officer. When Huling appeared, Hancock launched into a torrent of expletives that could have gone on indefinitely had not an aide unceremoniously interrupted him.
"The enemy is coming straight toward us!" the aide shrieked, pointing to the Cornfield.
"Damn them!" Hancock spat. "Let them come. That's what we're here for! Step back, men, step back."
He calmly inched back Clarkson's squad, which had been both stunned and impressed by their general's performance. The private walked nervously toward his new position not far from the right gun of Captain Andrew Cowan's battery.
"Now men, stay here until you are ordered away. This place must be held at all hazards!"
At this, Hancock pulled out a metal flask and pressed it to his lips. After a lingering draft, he wheeled his horse about, and, addressing battery commander Cowan, gave one final order: "Now, Captain, let them have it!"
With this Hancock bolted out of sight, leaving the 49th in considerably better spirits than he had found them. Buoyed by the visit, Private Robert Westbrook found courage enough to break from the ranks, raid a nearby bee's nest and appropriate platefuls of honey. Ignoring bursting shells and a horde of angry bees, his audacity caused a laugh when, as if to atone for his mischief, he brought his captain a dish of the natural confection.
Benjamin Clarkson too felt more relaxed. In his new position, he assumed a confident stance for several minutes. Then Confederate shelling resumed and men began dropping from the ranks on either side of him. Seeing that the face of the boy next to him had turned grotesquely white, Clarkson became anxious. "Poor fellow," he thought, "you're frightened. I wish you were away from here." Moments later the boy was thrown writhing to the ground by a shell fragment. Clarkson's own face then turned white as all hell broke loose in the 49th. In Company B, a cannon ball hit Private Gus Heller's foot, blowing it completely away. Charley King, the regiment's 13-year-old drummer boy, slumped into the arms of H.H. Bowles of the 6th Maine, shot through the body with a piece of shell. Andrew Smith was hit and died instantly.
Clarkson thought of home, his faith, and Hancock's final words about holding his position at all hazards. "Stay here until you are ordered away," he reminded himself, as a cannon ball passed within inches of his prone body. The projectile bounced and sizzled along the ground until it smashed into the East Woods, sending the still panic-stricken Major Huling farther east in the direction of Antietam Creek. His regiment would not see him again that day.
The same would hold true of Hancock; unbeknownst to his lead regiment, he had left the 49th for good. Twenty minutes earlier, Union Major General Israel B. Richardson had fallen mortally wounded near the Sunken Road while trying to strike a blow that, with the Rebel center suddenly carved wide open, might well have driven the Confederate army back miles, beyond the Potomac River. Instead, with no one in the immediate vicinity to command Richardson's men, the Rebels had waited incredulously for the death blow, the blow that did not come.
After rallying the spirits of Private Harlan's 124th Pennsylvania, Hancock had been summoned to headquarters and given the news about Richardson. When he returned to the firing line and positioned the 49th Pennsylvania beside Captain Cowan's cannon, it was as commander of Richardson's old division, with the effective rank of major general.
An ambitious professional soldier who doubtless mourned the loss of Richardson, Hancock was still gratified at receiving the battlefield promotion. It was a triumphant Hancock who uncorked his flask before the shuddering Private Clarkson, drinking a hurried toast to Providence before charging off to take his predecessor's place in the Bloody Lane.
One could speculate on what that moment meant to Hancock, whom Union army commander George B. "Little Mac" McClellan had already dubbed "the superb" for his insubordinate but successful charge against Major General D.H. Hill's Confederates at the spring 1862 Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia. Though he had dreamt of commanding a division since his days at West Point, Hancock's exceptional administrative skills doomed him early on to the role of quartermaster, a position in which, despite his other aspirations, he quickly became indispensable. Time and again, Hancock watched with surprising magnanimity as former subordinates passed him on their way up the chain of command into more meaningful positions.
Consequently, the opening battles of the Civil War found him in the settlement of Los Angeles, chafing nervously at his California garrison duties and bemoaning the fact that fate had set him down so far from the war effort. One by one, his fellow officers and post mates were called away; an old Southern friend, General Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding in San Francisco, resigned his U.S. Army commission for an equivalent one in the Confederate service. Hancock would never see him again. Southern-born fellow officers George Pickett, Richard Garnett and his old messmate Lewis Armistead, all stationed with him in California, sought his counsel on staying with the U.S. Army. In the end, each decided in favor of his own section, on a commission as a Confederate officer and on the adventure of going to the war in the East.
Fearful of being left behind, Hancock lobbied vigorously for a transfer. He notified his namesake, national hero Winfield Scott, then a lieutenant general and commander of all Union forces, of his availability. He wrote to Cabinet member and U.S. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to ask that he intercede on his behalf with President Abraham Lincoln. A "Keystone State" native, he wrote to Pennsylvania's Governor Andrew Curtin to offer his services to his home state. Finally, on August 3, 1861, Hancock was ordered to Washington D.C., where he was to report to the office of the quartermaster general.
This time, however, Hancock was determined to leave his old job behind. He had proven earlier he was a fighter and a leader, having charged the fortress at Churubusco during the Mexican War in the late 1840's. That he could also handle the administrative tasks of an infantry commander was without question. In the years between the Mexican and Civil Wars, Hancock had taken his military studies seriously, immersing himself in works on the campaigns of Caesar, Wallenstein, Napoleon, Wellington and Frederick the Great. He knew he was as prepared as anyone to play a sizeable part in the fight for the Union.
Fortunately, others in Washington realized this as well. McClellan, who had known Hancock at West Point and in Mexico, soon learned of his arrival and advised him to stay out of sight until a brigade could be found. Checking into Washington's Willard Hotel with his wife and children, Hancock laid low until September 23, when, after 13 years of unrequited longing for infantry command, he suddenly found himself a brigadier general.
From that point his ascent was comparatively swift. During McClellan's early 1862 campaign on Virginia's Penninsula, Hancock proved himself one of the few officers capable of shining through Little Mac's timidity. At Williamsburg, as his superiors shrank from any cohesive strategy, Hancock defied a specific order from corps commander Sumner to withdraw and attacked. Riding his lines, bellowing "Gentlemen, charge with the bayonet!" he propelled an assault that would all but annihilate the 5th North Carolina Infantry and ultimately speed up the enemy's retreat toward the Rebel capital, Richmond. Afterward, his insubordination happily forgotten, Hancock would be lauded by McClellan as McClellan attempted to obscure his own glaring deficiencies in the early movements of the campaign.
Reconnoitering the Sharpsburg field after 2 P.M., in the only appearance he would ever make on a battlefield during actual hostilities, McClellan held an impromptu council of war. During the meeting II Corps commander Sumner tried to get him to pull back again. Coincidentally, the enemy commander facing Hancock's new division along Bloody Lane was his old opponent D.H. Hill.
Sumner argued vigorously for withdrawal. Being bottled up with Sedgwick that morning in the West Woods had by that time all but eroded his fighting spirit. His corps had lost 5,100 men, more than the I and VII Corps' losses combined. Like many that day, the enormity of the slaughter had left him shattered and near hysteria. "Go back young man," he had yelled at a courier, "and tell General McClellan I have no command. Tell him my command, Bank's [Mansfield's] command, and Hooker's command are all cut up and demoralized. Tell him General [W.B.] Franklin has the only organized command on the field!"
Major General William Buell Franklin had in fact been arguing with Sumner against a withdrawal for some time before McClellan's arrival, an argument that continued as McClellan joined them near the Sunken Road. Sumner continued on, arguing at length against resuming the attack. Franklin contradicted him, restating his own belief a decisive victory could still be had.
Unlike Sumner, Franklin already sensed in a broad way the extent of the enemy's vulnerability; at 2:30 P.M. the Rebel left, against which the bulk of the Federal armies had thrown themselves, lay pulverized and exhausted in the West Woods. The center remained scantily defended after the Confederate exodus from the Sunken Road. On the right, less than 250 soldiers under Confederate Brigadier General Robert Toombs held an equally tenuous position -- facing Union Major General Ambrose Burnside's entire IX Corps across a vital Antietam Creek crossing called the Rohrbach Bridge.
Had McClellan only possessed the desire to press on and win the Battle of Antietam, his myriad opportunities would have compelled him to do so. Hancock needed only reinforcements to thrust his new division home against an almost non-existent Rebel center. Another major general, Fitz John Porter, commanded a fresh corps on the opposite bank of Antietam Creek. Franklin's VI Corps was holding its own, dodging artillery shells in the East Woods. McClellan could have acknowledged just how thoroughly he had gotten the better of the enemy force, if he had only let himself. One great thrust, delivered in concert as Burnside's corps began to stove in the Confederate right at 3 P.M., and the Rebel army would be smashed beyond repair. The war would be over. Little Mac would be a national hero.
But McClellan could not be more than what he ultimately was. It was always his habit to stand back from the fighting front during crises for which he might later be held accountable. So at the time he held his council with Sumner, there was no way he could fully appreciate his assets, among them the powerful presence now in command of the Union center. He could not know that with Hancock at his beck and call, he had possibly the best overall field commander in the Union Army in a position to deliver a textbook coup de grace.
Perhaps, if McClellan had been as close to the East Woods as Private Clarkson had been that morning, he would have seen Hancock bristling with all the enthusiasm that Sumner so obviously lacked. He might have noted that as much as Sumner was wrecked by the magnitude of the holocaust, Hancock was energized by it. But, as it was, having already achieved enough that afternoon to sustain his fragile delusions of success, he declined to launch any further assaults on the Confederate center, thereby insuring that the Battle of Sharpsburg would end a virtual stalemate.
In the end, with little more than daylight standing between him and victory for the Union army, Hancock was assigned defense duties along the Sunken Road. He was left to attend to little more than the disposition of his soldiers, which he accomplished as though commanding a division for the first time was the most natural thing in the world. Shouting his usual directives that the lines were "to be held at all hazards," Hancock closed some of the more dangerous intervals between his ranks before galloping off in search of artillery to strengthen his position. "A fine, soldierly looking officer," a staff man remarked as Hancock assumed his new command.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, events transpired that insured the Federals would lose any chance of ending the fight or the war with a few swift strokes. Troops commanded by Confederate Lieutenant General A.P. Hill marched to Robert E. Lee's support from Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and were thrown into combat in time to stop a thrust by Burnside's corps near the town of Sharpsburg on a homestead called the Otto Farm. Fighting continued there for several more hours before grinding to a halt near dusk.
McClellan characteristically did nothing the next day. As both sides nursed their wounds, Hancock prepared as best he could for whatever lay ahead. But because of McClellan's aversion to risk, Hancock's opportunity to shine had passed.
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