The struggle opened with disaster for the union army. Though Lee\'s plan of campaign fell by accident into McClellan\'s hands, it was too late to frustrate the first master stroke. Relying on Jackson\'s swift, bewildering marches, Lee, in hostile territory and confronted by twice his numbers, suddenly divided his army and hurled Jackson\'s corps against Harper\'s Ferry. The garrison, after a futile struggle of two days, surrendered twelve thousand five hundred and twenty men and their vast stores of war material.

The contrast between General White, the Federal officer in command who surrendered, and Jackson, his conqueror, was strikingly dramatic. The union General rode a magnificent black horse, was carefully dressed in shining immaculate uniform—gloves, boots and sword spotless. The Confederate General sat carelessly on his little shaggy sorrel, dusty, travel-stained and carelessly dressed.

The curiosity of the union army which had surrendered was keen to see the famous fighter. The entire twelve thousand prisoners of war lined the road as Jackson silently rode by.

A voice from the crowd expressed the universal feeling as they gazed:

"Boys, he ain\'t much for looks, but, by God, if we\'d had him we wouldn\'t have been caught in this trap!"

The first shock of Lee\'s and McClellan\'s armies was at South Mountain, where the desperate effort was made to break through and save Harper\'s Ferry. The attempt failed, though the union forces won the fight. Lee lost twenty-seven hundred men, killed and wounded and prisoners, and the Federal general, twenty-one hundred.

Lee withdrew to Sharpsburg on the banks of the Antietam to meet Jackson\'s victorious division sweeping toward him from Harper\'s Ferry.

On the first day the Confederate commander made a display of force only, awaiting the alignment of Jackson\'s troops. His men were so poorly shod and clothed they could not be brought into line of battle. When the fateful day of September 17th, 1862, dawned, still and clear and beautiful over the hills of Maryland, more than twenty thousand of Lee\'s men had fallen by the roadside barefooted and exhausted. When the first roar of McClellan\'s artillery opened fire in the grey dawn, they hurled their shells against less than thirty-seven thousand men in the Confederate lines. The union commander had massed eighty-seven thousand tried veterans behind his guns.

The President received the first news of the battle with a thrill of exultation. That Lee\'s ragged, footsore army hemmed in thus with Antietam Creek on one side and the broad, sweeping Potomac on the other would be crushed and destroyed he could not doubt for a moment.

As the sun rose above the eastern hills a gleaming dull-red ball of blood, the Federal infantry under Hooker swept into action and drove the Confederates from the open field into a dense woods, where they rallied, stood and mowed his men down with deadly aim. Hooker called for aid and General Mansfield rushed his corps into action, falling dead at the head of his men as they deployed in line of battle.

For two hours the sullen conflict raged, blue and grey lines surging in death-locked embrace until the field was strewn with the dead, the dying and the wounded.

Hooker was wounded. Sedgwick\'s corps swept into the field under a sharp artillery fire and reached the shelter of the woods only to find themselves caught in a trap between two Co............