The following took place after the North Carolinians were flanked and the mistaken order saw the Alabamians leave the sunken road.
The Yankees rushed forward into the sunken road, firing into the backs of the retreating Confederates. There were no Rebel troops near to hold the centre, except a few hundred rallied from various brigades. The Yankees crossed through the sunken road and occupied a cornfield and orchard in advance of it. They had now got within a few hundred yards of the hill that commanded Sharpsburg and the Confederate rear. The Rebels drew forward their artillery to halt the onslaught. About seventy rounds of canister were poured into the Federal line which was less than seventy yards away. As artillerymen went down, infantry men, even General Longstreet and his staff, served the guns. It was obvious to all that the centre must not be broken. The batteries were soon firing double charges of canister from the red hot barrels. Gunners avoided the time consuming task of swabbing the barrels after each discharge by “thumbing the vents”, a dangerous process by which a Gunner kept his thumb over the gun vent to prevent oxygen from entering the chamber and setting off the charge prematurely while the loaders tamped in powder and shot. When the gunner removed his thumb the cannon immediately fired. Firing these heavy double canister loads, made the gun recoil four or five feet and the gunner who was firing with his thumb had to ride the gun back. A commander of a Federal regiment facing this onslaught commented later that the artillery fire coming out of the orchard was the most effective he had ever experienced and that no one could survive its’ fire.
[1]
General D. H. Hill was now satisfied that the Yankees were so demoralized that a single regiment of fresh men could drive the whole of them in their front, back across Antietam Creek. He brought up about two hundred men that said they were willing to advance to the attack if he would lead them. A charge was made led by General D.H. Hill himself.
[2] However, the enemy being largely reinforced, returned to the slaughter, and in time, forced the Confederate line back towards the Piper barn, which position it held until the close of the day.
[3] The sunken road remained unoccupied for the rest of the battle becoming a sort of no man’s land between the two armies. This “Bloody Lane” was filled with dead, for the few wounded which sought cover there were by now surely decimated by the storm of Confederate canister.
[5] By about one o’clock in the afternoon, the fighting around the sunken road had ceased. After about four hours of continuous combat the Federal had loss about three thousand men, the Confederates two thousand, two hundred.
[6]
[1] “Warrior In Gray – General Robert Rodes of Lee’s Army” by James K. Swisher, page71
[2] O. R. Series 1, Volume 19, Chapter XXXI, page 1037, 1038
[3] “The Alabama Beacon”, Greensboro, Alabama, -October 17, 1862
[4] Confederate Veterans Magazine, Volume 19, page 177
[5] “Warrior In Gray – General Robert Rodes of Lee’s Army” by James K. Swisher, page72
[6] “Warrior In Gray – General Robert Rodes of Lee’s Army” by James K. Swisher, page71
Although there were a very large number of Confederate dead left in the sunken road, there were Union soldiers there as well, victims of the Confederate canister barrage.