way by Lee only an hour before,
and had made the hasty march by the rear of Sharpsburg to fall upon
Sedgwick. If therefore Rodman had been sent to cross at eight
o'clock, it is safe to say that his column, fording the stream in
the face of Walker's deployed division, would never have reached the
further bank,--a contingency that McClellan did not consider when
arguing, long afterward, the favorable results that might have
followed an earlier attack. As Rodman died upon the field, no full
report for his division was made, and we only know that he met with
some resistance from both infantry and artillery; that the winding
of the stream made his march longer than he anticipated, and that,
in fact, he only approached the rear of Toombs's position from that
direction about the time when our last and successful charge upon
the bridge was made, between noon and one o'clock.

The attacks at the Burnside bridge were made under my own eye.
Sturgis's division occupied the centre of our line, with Crook's
brigade of the Kanawha division on his right front, and Willcox's
division in reserve, as I have already stated. Crook's position was
somewhat above the bridge, but it was thought that by advancing part
of Sturgis's men to the brow of the hill, they could cover the
advance of Crook, and that the latter could make a straight dash
down the hill to our end of the bridge. The orders were accordingly
given, and Crook advanced, covered by the Eleventh Connecticut (of
Rodman's) under Colonel Kingsbury, deployed as skirmishers.
[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 419, 424.] In
passing over the spurs of the hills, Crook came out on the bank of
the stream above the bridge and found himself under a heavy fire at
short range. He faced the enemy and returned the fire, getting such
cover for his men as he could and trying to drive off or silence his
opponents. The engagement was one in which the Antietam prevented
the combatants from coming to close quarters, but it was none the
less vigorously continued with musketry fire. Crook reported that
his hands were full and that he could not approach closer to the
bridge. Later in the contest, his men, lining the stream, made
experiments in trying to get over, and found a fordable place a
little way above, by which he got over five companies of the
Twenty-eighth Ohio at about the same time as the final and
successful charge. But on the failure of Crook's first effort,
Sturgis ordered f