nding the routes on South
Mountain that led down on us by the mountain crests. The next day
orders for storming the works by the troops beyond the river were
given. McLaws and Walker had secured their position, and now were in
readiness to assist Jackson. All the batteries were opened on Bolivar
Heights, and from the three sides the artillery duel raged furiously
for a time, while Jackson's infantry was pushed to the front and
captured the works there. Soon thereafter the white flag was waving
over Harper's Ferry, "the citadel had fallen." In the capitulation
eleven thousand prisoners, seventy-two pieces of artillery, twelve
thousand stands of small arms, horses, wagons, munitions, and supplies
in abundance passed into the hands of the Confederates. Jackson's
troops fairly swam in the delicacies, provisions, and "drinkables"
constituting a part of the spoils taken, while Kershaw's and all of
McLaw's and Walker's troops, who had done the hardest of the fighting,
got none. Our men complained bitterly of this seeming injustice.
It took all day to finish the capitulation, paroling prisoners, and
dividing out the supplies; but we had but little time to rest, for
Lee's Army was now in a critical condition. McClellan, having by
accident captured Lee's orders specifying the routes to be taken by
all the troops after the fall of Harper's Ferry, knew exactly where
and when to strike. The Southern Army was at this time woefully
divided, a part being between the Potomac and the Shenandoah, Jackson
with three divisions across the Potomac in Virginia, McLaws with his
own and a part of Anderson's Division on the heights of Maryland, with
the enemy five miles in his rear at Crompton Pass cutting him off from
retreat in that direction. Lee, with the rest of his army and reserve
trains, was near Hagerstown.

On the 16th we descended the mountain, crossed the Potomac, fell in
the rear of Jackson's moving army, and marched up the Potomac some
distance, recrossed into Maryland, on our hunt for Lee and his army.
The sun poured down its blistering rays with intense fierceness upon
the already fatigued and fagged soldiers, while the dust along the
pikes, that wound over and around the numerous hills, was almost
stifling. We bivouaced for the night on the roadside, ten miles from
Antietam Creek, where Lee was at the time concentrating his army, and
where on the next day was to be fought the most stubbornly contested
and bloody battle of modern