d, but were repulsed with severe punishment, and
as the day declined were content to entrench themselves along the
line of the road leading from Sharpsburg to the Potomac at the mouth
of the Antietam, half a mile in our front. The men of the Ninth
Corps lay that night upon their arms, the line being one which
rested with both flanks near the Antietam and curved outward upon
the rolling hill-tops which covered the bridge and commanded the
plateau between us and the enemy. With my staff, I lay upon the
ground behind the troops, holding our horses by the bridles as we
rested, for our orderlies were so exhausted that we could not deny
them the same chance for a little broken slumber.

The Ninth Corps occupied its position on the heights west of the
Antietam without further molestation, except an irritating picket
firing, till the Confederate army retreated on the 19th of
September. But the position was one in which no shelter from the
weather could be had, nor could any cooking be done; and the troops
were short of rations. My division wagon-train, which I had brought
from the West, here stood us in good stead, for the corps as a whole
was very short of transportation. The energy of Captain Fitch, my
quartermaster, forced the train back and forth between us and the
nearest depot of supplies, and for several days the whole corps had
the benefit of the provisions thus brought forward. Late in the
afternoon of Thursday the 18th, Morell's division of Porter's corps
was ordered to report to Burnside to relieve the picket line and
some of the regiments in the most exposed position. One brigade was
sent over the Antietam for this purpose, and a few of the Ninth
Corps regiments were enabled to withdraw far enough to cook some
rations, of which they had been in need for twenty-four hours.
[Footnote: General Porter in his report says Morell took the place
of the whole Ninth Corps. In this he is entirely mistaken, as the
reports from Morell's division, as well as those of the Ninth Corps,
show.] Harland's brigade of Rodman's division had been taken to the
east side of the stream to be reorganized, on the evening of
Wednesday the 17th. The sounds heard within the enemy's lines by our
pickets gave an inkling of their retrograde movement in the night of
Thursday, and at break of day on Friday morning the retreat of Lee's
whole army was discovered by advancing the picket line.
Reconnoissances sent to the front discovered that the whole