A Field Guide to Antietam by Carol Reardon

Author:Carol Reardon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

The Union breakthrough at the Sunken Road

The presence of Barlow’s new line here caused the withdrawal of Brigadier General Robert E. Rodes’s men, as well. The Alabamians still held the road on the upslope to the left of the Roulette farm access road, but Lieutenant Colonel J. N. Lightfoot of the 6th Alabama advised Rodes that the right wing of his regiment had begun to take heavy losses from a “terrible enfilading fire” from Barlow, and perhaps from some of Caldwell’s men and the Irish Brigade. Rodes ordered Lightfoot to bend his right wing “back out of the old road” so part of the 6th Alabama could face Barlow’s fire directly and even return it. Instead, Lightfoot “gave the command, ‘Sixth Alabama, about face; forward march.” The commander of the 5th Alabama, next to Lightfoot’s regiment, asked if the order was meant for the entire brigade. Lightfoot answered yes—although this clearly clashed with Rodes’s intention to confront Barlow—so the 5th Alabama pulled back, too. Rodes did not see them go “until it was too late to rally them.” Then, a nearby shell explosion temporarily stunned him. When he finally rejoined his brigade, he “found it, without visible cause to me, retreating in confusion.” Except for approximately forty men, Rodes’s brigade “had completely disappeared.” Union forces now controlled nearly the entire sunken road.

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