Six months before Antietam, Charlie Upham had taken a bullet in the shoulder in the Battle of Newbern, North Carolina. The wound never healed, but he refused to let it stop him. Now Upham, twenty-three, led his own company and another down the steep banks of the winding Antietam Creek, until they found a fording place.
The troops would face a sharp, slippery ascent up the far banks. While a Union battery, supported by the 8th Connecticut, distracted the Rebel artillery on the other side, Harland began to send his troops splashing across Antietam Creek. It was about one in the afternoon. A mile or so north of them, Union soldiers finally broke through Rebel fire to cross the stone bridge. Burnside’s troops, by bridge and by ford, were across; now they could come together for a united attack on the rebels.
An eighteen-year-old sergeant in the 8th Connecticut, Forrest Spofford was wounded in the left arm at Antietam. After a surgeon amputated, Spofford returned to his regiment, serving another two years. Later in the war, Spofford suffered a battle wound to his other arm, but again survived. After the war, he would serve as a one-armed librarian in Norwich.
But troops to the north needed ammunition, and each brigade had to move into position. The Georgian infantry regiments that had defended the bridge continued to harass the Union troops. Confederate artillery shelled Harland’s brigade again, but “We lay down & let them work,” remembered Wolcott Marsh.41
Finally, at about four o’clock, the order came to advance on the enemy. The delay would prove devastating.
The hiatus had allowed the Confederates to bring up forces from other parts of the battlefield, and re-form their lines in anticipation of Burnside’s attack. It also brought the arrival of over 2,000 Rebel soldiers under A. P. Hill. That humid day Hill’s men had rapidly marched the seventeen miles from Harper’s Ferry, many falling out from exhaustion. Now those who remained came down the road at the double-quick, just in time to turn the tide for the South.
The 1st Brigade of the Union’s 9th Corps advanced up the hill into a barrage of artillery and musketry, and then Colonel Harland ordered his own brigade forward. At the head of the 8th Regiment was Lt. Col. Hiram Appelman.
Col. Appelman led the Eighth forward in steady step up the hill. Nearly the whole corps was now charging, and the advancing line stretched far away to the right. As they reached the crest, the rebel troops were but a few rods in front. The Union line halted, and poured in a telling volley, and again leaped forward; and the enemy broke and fled, halting and firing as they could. A storm of shot, shell, and musketry, was sweeping through the ranks of the Eighth, now on the extreme Union left …
Steadily forward moves the line, now marking every yard of advance with blood of fallen men. The rebels still fall back. The 1st Brigade wavers, and slowly retires in disorder. Wilcox’s division, too, is giving way farther to the right. Forward presses the Eighth, until the men can see the road whereby Lee must retreat. “The position is ours” they shout; and a “Hurrah” goes down the line.
But already many have observed an immense force moving straight up on the left flank. “Re-inforcements,” say some: but Gen. Harland knows better; and he rides rapidly to the rear to hurry forward regiments to meet this new rebel move … The Eighth is now alone clinging to the crest. Three batteries are turned on them, and the enemy’s infantry close in around …
Eleazur Ripley, a sailor from Windham, had joined the Union army days after the war began. Returning home after Bull Run, Ripley immediately reenlisted, joining the 8th Connecticut in which he quickly rose to be captain. At Antietam, Ripley’s regiment held an advanced position where Confederate artillery raked their ranks. As A. P. Hill’s Rebel infantry charged on their flank, the soldiers of the 8th Connecticut were decimated. Captain Ripley, his left arm shattered, stood among his men, refusing to leave the field until the 8th was ordered to withdraw. After undergoing an amputation, Ripley continued to serve, transferring into the Veterans Reserve Corps. Following the war, Ripley worked as a clerk in the Pension Bureau, serving his fellow veterans.
No re-inforcements come. Twenty men are falling every minute. Col. Appelman is borne to the rear. John McCall falls bleeding. Eaton totters, wounded, down the hill. Wait, bullet-riddled, staggers a few rods, and sinks. Ripley stands with a shattered arm. Russell lies white and still. Morgan and Maine have fallen. Whitney Wilcox is dead. Men grow frantic. The wounded prop themselves behind the rude stone fence, and hurl leaden vengeance at the foe. Even the chaplain snatches the rifle and cartridge-box of a dead man, and fights for life.42
***
Early in the fall of 1861, a Norwich teenager named Marvin Wait left Union College, where he was a student, to join Connecticut’s 8th Regiment. An intelligent, dedicated young man, he learned quickly; less than six months after enlisting, Private Wait of Company D had become 1st Lieutenant Wait.
Wait received orders to report to the Signal Corps in Burnside’s division, where he rapidly learned the use of signal flags. Using a spyglass and flags at the Battle of Roanoke Island, Wait had been able to transmit messages from General Burnside’s gunboat to his officers. At the Siege of Fort Macon, North Carolina, Marvin Wait and another officer, Lieutenant Andrews, took a position where they could see the Union shells as the artillerymen attempted to bombard the Confederate-held fort. Andrews’ official report explained:
The ten-inch shell were falling almost without exception more than three hundred yards beyond the Fort. Lieutenant Wait and myself continued to signal to the officer in charge until the correct range was obtained. The eight-inch shell were falling short—we signaled to the officer in charge of that battery with the same effect …
From the position of our batteries, it was impossible for the officers in charge to see how their shots fell, but owing to the observations made by Lieutenant Wait and myself, and signaled to them from time to time, an accurate range was obtained by all the batteries … After 12 m.. every shot fired from our batteries fell in or on the Fort. At 4 o’clock, P.M., a white flag appeared on the Fort.43
The head of the Signal Corps presented a battle flag to Lieutenant Wait in recognition of his meritorious conduct that day.
Wait returned to the 8th Regiment a month before it marched with McClellan to Sharpsburg, Maryland. On the morning of the Battle of Antietam, it was just after seven when a Confederate cannonball bounded through the ranks of Company D. Three men were killed outright; a fourth wounded. Wait was so close that he was covered with dirt and blood.
As the 8th Regiment moved into line of battle later that day, one of the officers noticed the “determined fire of his eye” as nineteen-year-old Marvin Wait moved forward with his men.44 As he raised his sword high in the advance, a bullet shattered his right arm, but Wait would not leave his troops. Shifting his sword to his left hand, he continued. “If Lieutenant Wait had only left the battle of his own accord when first hit in the arm, all would have been well, but he bravely stood to encourage his men still further by his own example,” wrote Captain Charles Coit.45
Young Marvin Wait of Norwich (left) would not leave the field after being wounded. Hit by multiple bullets, he finally fell. Chaplain John M. Morris (right) carefully tucked the bleeding Wait into a sheltered spot behind a stone wall, and hurried off to find an ambulance for him.
In the minutes that followed, Wait was hit in the left arm, the abdomen, and the leg. He staggered, and went down. An enlisted man ran to his young lieutenant and began helping him to the rear, when the regiment’s chaplain appeared and took over.
Men were falling everywhere, and Major Ward was begging his soldiers to fall back, fall back before the regiment