Calling all Antietam experts!

[Bruce Vail]

For a short piece that I am writing for my son, I want to estimate the number of soldiers involved in the fight at Miller's Cornfield. One book said that Hooker's Corps alone had 9,000 men, but if you start adding up the numbers for each Corps you wind up with some pretty astonishing numbers. Can it be possible that there 20,000-25,000 men all fighting at the same time?

 

[kholland]

Looking at the maps in Bradley Gottfried' s book "The Maps of Antietam" Hooker' s Corps opened the battle closely followed by Rickett´s Division. And these two were situated in a giant fan shaped force starting in the West Woods extending to the the North Woods into the East Woods. And not all units were taking part in the action at the same time. Later they were reinforced by Mansfield's 12th Corps at which time these two forces were being taken back and out of the fight. And then later Crawford's Brigade entered the East Woods aiming for the Cornfield.

So it was a constant, somewhat fluid movement of Corps and Brigades (if anything in battle can be considered fluid) being taken into and out of action. But as you can see from the map below, "The Cornfield" was a small part of this overall action. By the way, I would highly recommend this book and Gottfried's book on Gettysburg.

Here is a fairly good map from: http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/antietam/maps/antietammap1.html?referrer=https://www.bing.com/

 

[AUG]

As Kholland said, the fight in the Cornfield and surrounding area was very fluid - it swayed back and forth as units were sent in and repulsed, one after the other. So no, everyone wasn't in the fight all at once. The battle in and around Cornfield lasted for about several hours total, though only a handful of brigades from either side were engaged at any one given time, and some of those were only in the fight for about 30 or 40 minutes.

 

[rpkennedy]

If you're looking specifically at the Cornfield itself, the numbers aren't going to be quite so high. I'm on vacation and don't have all of my books available but a short list would include:

Union
Duryea's Brigade
Gibbons Brigade
Phelps' Brigade
Hartsuff's Brigade
90th Pennsylvania
Anderson's Brigade (along the Northern edge)
Magilton's Brigade (along the Northern edge)
Elements of Patrick's Brigade
Elements of Crawfordsville Brigade
Gordon's Brigade
Tyndale's Brigade
Elements of Goodrich's Brigade

Confederate
Hays' Brigade (the southern edge)
Wofford's Brigade
Law's Brigade
Ripley's Brigade (the southern edge)
Colquitt's Brigade

R

 

[kholland]

If you're looking specifically at the Cornfield itself, the numbers aren't going to be quite so high. I'm on vacation and don't have all of my books available but a short list would include:

Union
Duryea's Brigade
Gibbons Brigade
Phelps' Brigade
Hartsuff's Brigade
90th Pennsylvania
Anderson's Brigade (along the Northern edge)
Magilton's Brigade (along the Northern edge)
Elements of Patrick's Brigade
Elements of Crawfordsville Brigade
Gordon's Brigade
Tyndale's Brigade
Elements of Goodrich's Brigade

Confederate
Hays' Brigade (the southern edge)
Wofford's Brigade
Law's Brigade
Ripley's Brigade (the southern edge)
Colquitt's Brigade

R

And don't forget one of the most well known stories, that of Hood's Brigade having their morning coffee respite interrupted by being thrown into this fight. The suffered 550 casualties out of 850 men in their fight with the 6th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade.

 

[dlavin]

If you can figure this out, I'd be interested in knowing. Especially if you can get it broken down by brigade.

 

[Bruce Vail]

It seems like a pretty daunting task. I was hoping somebody smarter than me had already figured it out!

 

[rpkennedy]

It seems like a pretty daunting task. I was hoping somebody smarter than me had already figured it out!

Add up the numbers in the units I gave and that'll give you a pretty good approximation. I'm just not with my books or files at the moment.

R

 

[Bruce Vail]

Add up the numbers in the units I gave and that'll give you a pretty good approximation. I'm just not with my books or files at the moment.

R

Thanks. Will do -- and report back later.

 

[Bruce Vail]

FYI --

NPS' Antietam Battlefield Park website has come up with their own casualty statistics:

https://www.nps.gov/anti/learn/historyculture/casualties.htm

They calculate their numbers by the three different phases of the battle -- Morning, Mid-Day and Afternoon phases.

The Fight at the Cornfield would be included in the Morning Phase. NPS estimates that there were a total of 43,700 troops engaged (23,600 Union and 20,100 Confederate) with casualties of 13,860 (7,280 Union and 6,580 Confederate).