Hey everyone, welcome to episode 194 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all.

Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

At the end of the last episode, it was 9 o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, September

17, 1862.

After three hours of fierce combat, the Confederates holding the left end of Robert E. Lee's line,

north of Sharpsburg, had finally been driven from all of the battlefield east of the Hagerstown

Turnpike, that is, from the Cornfield and the east woods and the pasture and the Momma

farmstead south of them.

In the ferocious fighting, some 8,000 men had already fallen, with the loss about equally

divided between Union and Confederate.

The Cornfield had been at the center of the storm, and among the trampled stalks, and around

its four sides, the dead and wounded carpeted the ground.

Over along the Hagerstown Turnpike, the bodies lay in heaps.

So torn and mangled by the blasts of Point Blank Cannon Fire, the Disselter said, quote,

you were obliged to look twice before recognizing them as human beings.

Joseph Hooker's first corps and Joseph Mansfield's twelfth corps had each went in alone and

unsupported.

First first hooker then Mansfield.

Nevertheless, the success of hammer blows of their attacks had pushed the rebels on

...