This album has 988 photos in total.
Album was created 8/5/09 8:35 PM.
The Bloody Cornfield was the center of the first phase of the Battle of Antietam. The battle began by 6 a.m. when the Union assaulted and Confederate countered in the Cornfield, East and West Woods, and around the Dunker Church. The battle opened at dawn on the 17th when Union General Joseph Hooker's artillery began a murderous fire on Jackson's men in the Miller cornfield. "In the time I am writing," Hooker reported, "every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the [Confederate soldiers] slain lay in rows precicely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before." Hooker's troops advanced, driving the Confederates before them, and General Stonewall Jackson reported that his men were "exposed for near an hour to a terrific storm of shell, canister, and musketry."
About 7 am Jackson was reinforced and succeeded in driving the Federals back. An hour later Union troops under General Joseph Mansfield counterattacked and by 9 o'clock had regained some of the lost ground. Then, in an effort to extricate some of Mansfield's men from their isolated position near the Dunker Church, General John Sedgwick's division of Edwin V. Sumner's corps advanced into the West Woods. There Confederate troops struck Sedgwick's men on both flanks inflicting appaling casualties.
The battle raged back and forth over the three hour period. General Hood's Texas Confederates drove the Union troops back through the Bloody Cornfield to the northern edge but where brutally assaulted there, ultimately suffering more than 60% casualties.
The Bloody Cornfield, an area about 250 yards deep and 400 yards wide, was a scene of indescribable destruction. It was estimated that the Cornfield changed hands no fewer than 15 times in the course of the morning. The morning phase ended with casualties on both sides of almost 13,000. As many as 5,000 died in the Bloody Cornfield.
