The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 582
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Miers home to recuperate. Months in recovery, he was finally discharged
from the army with a disabled arm and foot and sent home to Texas.18
Lee followed up his success at Second Manassas with his first invasion of
the north. Rufus King Felder referred to it as "a campaign unequalled by
any thing of this war." Historians would later argue that the outlook for
the Confederacy never looked brighter, but Rufus King felt otherwise,
writing, "I have heard a great deal of southern feeling in Ma [Maryland],
but I found it a mistake. There are some trusted men there, but the ma-
jority are Union." Lee's army was exhausted and ill-prepared for an inva-
sion into the North in the aftermath of Second Manassas. Colonel Robert-
son, suffering from a shoulder wound from Gaines' Mill and a groin
wound from Second Manassas, collapsed along the way while leading the
Fifth Texas Infantry. Yet Lee pressed northward and engaged a much larg-
er Federal army on the morning of September 17, 1862, near the town of
Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek.19
John Bell Hood led the advance of his division, which included his old
Texan Brigade, at 7 A.M. The Confederates rushed out of the woods,
crossed Hagerstown Turnpike and poured into the Cornfield, routing the
Union troops in position there. The Fifth Texas was among several regi-
ments that turned and advanced into the East Woods in pursuit of re-
treating Union troops. Hood's Texans fought, lost, and re-took the same
ground several times in the course of the bloodiest single day of the war.
The Army of Northern Virginia suffered 40 percent casualties. John Bell
Hood's division suffered 6o percent casualties! Hood, upon being asked
after the fighting where his division was, was said to have replied, "Dead
on the field."o
Felder wrote of Antietam:
We had a very hard fought battle at Sharpsburg before we left M. [Maryland]. The
enemy greatly outnumbered us. The battle raged furiously the whole day com-
mencing early in the morning & ceasing only at night. The slaughter on both
sides was terrible; there was very little ground gained on either side. Both sides
were too exhausted to renew the fight next day & a flag of truce was agreed to
bury the dead. This occupied all day & that night our forces fell back across the
river. Next morning the Yankees thinking we were retreating crossed over a
brigade which was immediately attacked & the whole except about a hundred was
killed & taken ...21
18 Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State Government, 341-342.
19 Felder letter, Sept. 23, 1862 (1st quotation); Felder letter, Oct. 1, 1862 (2nd quotation);
Simpson (ed.), Touched With Valor, 12
"0 Stephen Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (New York: Ticknor & Fields,
1983), 197-199, 202;J. M. Priest, Antietam, The Soldzers'Battle (Shippensburg, Penn.: White Mane
Publishing, 1989), 60-70, 308.
21 Felder letter, Oct. 1, 1862.582
April
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003, periodical, 2003; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101223/m1/660/: accessed March 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.