This is the fourth part in a series on the recent Central Virginia Battlefield Trust spring seminar: The Road to Fredericksburg
The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in United States military history, almost always overshadows the other clashes between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac during the first invasion of the North during the waning days of the summer of 1862. However, that titanic struggle 
would be eclipsed by a “minor” closing action of the campaign near the small Virginia (soon to be West Virginia) community of Shepherdstown, and Dr. James Broomall contends that would put both armies on the road to Fredericksburg.
Lee had suffered his first defeat at the head of the Army of Northern Virginia on the slopes of South Mountain on September 14th. His invasion plans were already in serious jeopardy because Harper’s Ferry had not yet fallen to Stonewall Jackson’s troops, his army was badly divided and George McClellan was showing uncharacteristic aggressiveness. Indeed, on the evening of the 14th he would write plaintively, “the day has gone against us.” Three days later, he would suffer his second loss on the rolling landscape north and east of Sharpsburg along the meandering Antietam Creek only barely avoiding an even more crushing defeat.
Lee was not yet ready to give up on the idea of his invasion of Pennsylvania when the sun went down on the Sharpsburg carnage on September 17th. While he knew his army had been seriously hurt, he knew that McClellan had been bloodied, as well. He would defiantly remain in position the next day almost daring McClellan to attack again, a dare “Little Mac” would not take. As the hours of the 18th passed, however, Lee had decided to point his men back toward the Old Dominion beginning on the 19th with a hazardous nighttime river crossing. On the other side of the Potomac behind Confederate lines lay Shepherdstown.
A small community of less than a thousand souls when war came in 1861, Shepherdstown was a destination for farmers to area mills. Nearby fords on the Potomac River had long-served to connect the town with the Maryland communities of Sharpsburg, Boonsboro and other nearby villages and hamlets. The fords gave way to a ferry which was replaced by a bridge, but that was a military target burned by the Confederates early on after war came in 1861. By September 1862, traffic between Virginia and Maryland was relegated to the old fords used by native peoples for hundreds of years.
The Shepherdstown residents knew a storm was coming. Like the clouds heralding a summer storm, they had seen the smoke from the South Mountain summit, and heard the approaching thunder of cannon. It was not long before a trickle of wounded found their way to relative safety in the public buildings, barns, warehouses and homes. The noise would grow louder and the powder smoke more dense as the armies came to grips across the Potomac, and the trickle would become a flood as the wounded quickly outnumbered the locals. Following them would be the entire southern army.
Once safely across the river, Lee returned to thoughts of Pennsylvania. If he changed his base from Winchester to Martinsburg and his cavalry could secure a Potomac crossing at Williamsport, Lee could execute a flank march around McClellan and continue north across the Mason-Dixon line.
McClellan would begin a tepid “pursuit” (which is a VERY charitable description!) In reality, he would push forward around two-thousand relatively green soldiers to see where the rebels had gone. As they neared the Maryland shore of the river, they could clearly see Confederate rearguard artillery and infantry on the Virginia cliffs, resulting in one officer remarking the situation “reminds me of Ball’s Bluff,” the scene of a federal debacle nearly year earlier some miles downstream on the Potomac.
Union sharpshooters began to take their toll on the artillerists, and well-directed cannon fire also served to discomfit the southern troops. It would not be long until the situation became untenable, and the raw Union troops soon were able to force a crossing of the river to the Virginia shore.
Lee’s artillery chief, William Pendleton, was responsible for the rear guard. He became convinced a disaster was in the making, and would scurry to report to the commanding general that the entire artillery reserve had been captured. Alarmed, Lee and Jackson would immediately make arrangements to counter the apparent disaster. As had happened a number of times in the past month, it would be the soldiers of A.P. Hill’s “Light Division” that would get the assignment.
Having marched more than 160 miles over the past few weeks, Hill’s 2,000 veterans would head back to the ford to seal the breach. Although fairly matched man-for-man, the southern veterans had the advantage over the raw federals. As at Ball’s Bluff, Union soldiers would eventually be forced back into the river where they would present easy targets for Hill’s Virginians. All told, the two sides would lose less than 700 men making the Shepherdstown affair seem little more than an afterthought to the Antietam carnage.
Lee was beginning to recognize, however, the damage to his men. They were tired, hurt and not as many as they were a few weeks before. Straggling was widespread. The spark, the élan, was not there. The events of the last week began to clearly dawn on Lee that this was no longer the army he had led through the Seven Days and Second Manassas campaigns. It was tired, needed rest and time to heal. Continuing the invasion was simply asking too much, and Lee realized he needed to call off the invasion altogether. The Shepherdstown battle had changed the calculus.
Rather than heading north into Pennsylvania as summer turned to fall in 1862, Lee would turn south to rest and refit. McClellan would remain close to Sharpsburg for another six weeks unaware the sands of time were running out on his military career. Apart from some minor cavalry skirmishing in the Loudon Valley, the first invasion was over.
The events in Maryland during the first three weeks of September would alter Lee’s famed audacity just as they had affected his army. Lee’s next battle in December would see him abandon his offensive tactics in favor of a defensive strategy that preserved and protected his men, allowing his to husband his most important resource for a struggle that would go on and a future opportunity to carry the war into Yankeedom. After Shepherdstown, the gaze of the armies again turned south towards Richmond, and that route would go through Fredericksburg.
April 21st: “Poor Burn Feels Dreadfully: Transition of Power in the Army of the Potomac”
