shed reputation for
candor and freedom from any wish to avoid full personal
responsibility for his acts. It was not till his report was
published in the Official Records (1887) [Footnote: _Id_., p. 416.]
that I saw it or learned its contents, although I enjoyed his
personal friendship down to his death. He was content to have stated
the fact as he knew it, and did not feel the need of debating it.
The circumstances have satisfied me that his accuracy in giving the
hour was greater than my own. [Footnote: Upon reflection, I think it
probable that the order from McClellan was read to me, and that I
thus got the hour of its date connected in my mind with the
beginning of our attack.]

It will not be wondered at, therefore, if to my mind the story of
the eight o'clock order is an instance of the way in which an
erroneous recollection is based upon the desire to make the facts
accord with a theory. The actual time must have been as much later
than nine o'clock as the period during which, with absorbed
attention, we had been watching the battle on the right,--a period,
it is safe to say, much longer than it seemed to us. The judgment of
the hour which I gave in my report was merely my impression from
passing events, for I hastened at once to my own duties without
thinking to look at my watch; whilst the cumulative evidence seems
to prove, conclusively, that the time stated by Burnside, and by
McClellan himself in his original report, is correct. The order,
then, to Burnside to attack was not sent at eight o'clock, but
reached him at ten; it was not sent to follow up an advantage gained
by Hooker and Sumner, but to create, if possible, a strong diversion
in favor of the imperilled right wing when the general outlook was
far from reassuring.

McClellan truly said, in his original report, that the task of
carrying the bridge in front of Burnside was a difficult one.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 31.] The hill on
which I have placed the station of General Burnside was the bolder
and more prominent crest of the line of hills which skirted the
Antietam on the east, and was broken by depressions here and there,
through which the country roads ran down to the stream. Such a
hollow was just at the south of Burnside's position at the haystack
on the Rohrback farm. In rear of him and a little lower down were
the farm buildings, and from these a road ran down the winding
hollow to the Antietam, but reached the stre