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The Most Terrible Clash of Arms
As Union soldiers stepped out of the Cornfield (in front of you) at dawn, September 17, 1862, Confederate troops, aligned in the fields just behind you, unleashed a horrific volley. The single bloodiest day in American History had begun in earnest.
For the next four hours the Cornfield was the center of a storm of lead, iron, and flame as Federal soldiers from the First and Twelfth Corps clashed with Lee's men. The Cornfield changed hands again and again as both sides attacked and counterattacked. One soldier remembered, "The air seems full of leaden missiles. Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of soldiers, canteens and haversacks are riddled with bullets, the dead and wounded go down in scores."More than 25,000 soldiers fought in and around the Cornfield. By 9:30 a.m. thousands of them lay dead and dying. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood wrote, "It was here that I witnessed the most terrible clash of arms, by far, that has occurred during the war." Union Gen. Joseph Hooker remembered that "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 slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield." |