On 14 September 1862 the Union Army of the Potomac under Major General George B. McClellan attacked the Confederate troops holding the passes of South Mountain in Maryland: Crampton's, Fox's and Turner's Gaps. The day before, his soldiers had found a lost copy of Robert E. Lee's orders wrapped around three cigars. The fighting, from morning into the night, killed two generals, Jesse L. Reno and Samuel Garland. At nightfall Union troops held Crampton's Gap, while the Confederates still held Turner's Gap and the western edge of Fox's Gap. Lee withdrew in the night and gathered his army at Sharpsburg, where the armies met again three days later. On the same day in 1847 the U.S. Army entered Mexico City.
Three cigars and a lost order
Early in September 1862 Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac into Maryland. When the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry did not withdraw, he divided his army in Special Orders No. 191 and sent Stonewall Jackson to capture it. The Union Army of the Potomac under Major General George B. McClellan followed the Confederates to Frederick. The National Park Service sums up what followed: mislaid communications led to the Battle of South Mountain.1
The copy turned up at Frederick on 13 September. Colonel Silas Colgrove of the 27th Indiana later wrote that the Twelfth Corps reached the town about noon, that his regiment stacked arms on ground D. H. Hill's division had held the evening before, and that within minutes "the order was brought to me by First Sergeant John M. Bloss and Private B. W. Mitchell, of Company F, 27th Indiana Volunteers, who stated that it was found by Private Mitchell near where they had stacked arms". Colgrove adds that it was wrapped around three cigars. The American Battlefield Trust calls Mitchell a corporal and writes that a private found the envelope. According to Colgrove, Colonel S. E. Pittman at division headquarters recognized the signature of Colonel Chilton, Lee's adjutant general.2
The order reached McClellan's headquarters shortly before noon in the American Battlefield Trust's account, and by early evening in the National Park Service's. The Trust writes that by nightfall McClellan had ordered the whole army to move west at dawn against the South Mountain passes. By about 10 p.m. Lee had ordered General James Longstreet to Boonsboro. In the Trust's account Longstreet was to reinforce Hill, whose division, with J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry, guarded the passes. Hill wrote that his division numbered less than 5,000 men on the morning of 14 September and had five roads to guard; Jacob D. Cox, who attacked him, called it five thousand strong. The Trust estimates that about 28,000 Union and 18,000 Confederate soldiers were engaged that day.3
The fight for the gaps
The first attack came at Fox's Gap. Hill's report dates the opening fire to about 7 o'clock, McClellan has Cox's division moving up the mountain at about 8 a.m., and the National Park Service gives 9 a.m.. Cox's Kanawha Division of Reno's IX Corps struck the brigade of General Samuel Garland. Hill reported that Garland's brigade checked the attack and secured the road, a service that cost the life of "that pure, gallant, and accomplished Christian soldier, General Garland". Cox later wrote that Garland died "vainly trying to stay the rout of his brigade".4
Cox held the crest as help came up; McClellan writes that Willcox's division was sent forward between 12 and 1 p.m. and Sturgis's between 2 and 3. At about 3 p.m. Major General Joseph Hooker's I Corps moved up to the right of the main road, and George G. Meade's Pennsylvania Reserves attacked the height on that flank. The American Battlefield Trust writes that John P. Hatch's division broke the Confederate line after a firefight along a cornfield fence, and that only the timely arrival of Longstreet's reinforcements kept it from collapsing. Late in the afternoon John Gibbon's brigade advanced up the main road and fought on after dark.5
Farther south, General William B. Franklin's VI Corps attacked Crampton's Gap. Franklin reported that Slocum's division, with the brigades of Bartlett, Newton and Torbert, charged on the right of the road and Brooks's brigade on the left. Slocum's charge, he wrote, "sustained as it was over a great distance, and on a rough ascent of unusual steepness, was decisive". The National Park Service puts Franklin's corps at 12,000 men and the Confederates facing it at roughly 1,200. Franklin counted 400 prisoners, 700 stand of arms, one gun and three stand of colors taken; McClellan's preliminary report gives one gun and four colors.6
The death of Reno
At Fox's Gap the fighting went on into the evening. Cox remembered: "A little before sunset, Reno came up in person, anxious to know why the right could not get forward quite to the summit. After a few moments' conversation with me he passed on to Sturgis; it seemed to me he was hardly gone before he was brought back upon a stretcher, dead". Reno had gone to the skirmish line, Cox wrote, and was "shot down by the enemy posted among the rocks and trees". McClellan reported that he fell "pierced with a musket ball". Hill gave the shot to the Twenty-third North Carolina, calling Reno "a renegade Virginian, who was killed by a happy shot".7
Cox's report places the death "just before sunset", Burnside's "about 7 p. m.", and Hill's later account at 7 p.m. in Wise's field. Command of the IX Corps, Cox reported, passed to him.8
Night on the mountain
When darkness fell the fight for Turner's and Fox's Gaps was not over. According to the American Battlefield Trust, the Confederates still held Turner's Gap and the western edge of Fox's Gap, while Crampton's Gap was in Union hands. Hill wrote that his men "held the crests of the mountain, on the National road and the old Sharpsburg road, until Lee's order for withdrawal was given". Burnside reported that troops on his extreme left were partially engaged until 10 o'clock.9
Hill writes that at about 9 p.m. he told Lee that Union batteries on a hill lost on the Confederate left, together with those Pleasonton had placed on the right, would make any position on the pike or the crest untenable next morning, and that Longstreet agreed. "We retreated that night to Sharpsburg", Hill reported, having achieved, in his words, "the delay of the Yankee army until Harper's Ferry could not be relieved". The National Park Service has Hill and Longstreet withdraw after dark. Cox recalled that when morning dawned the Confederates had abandoned the last foothold above Turner's Gap, and the Trust writes that they were completely gone by sunrise on 15 September.10
Three days to Antietam
McClellan's tabular statement, which covers South Mountain and Crampton's Pass together, lists 443 killed, 1,807 wounded and 75 missing, an aggregate of 2,325; the American Battlefield Trust gives the same figures. The revised summary in the Official Records, compiled from nominal lists, counts 1,813 for South Mountain (Turner's Pass) and 533 for Crampton's Pass separately, and Frederick Dyer's figures, published by the National Park Service, are the same. For the Confederates the Trust estimates 2,685, including 800 missing and captured, the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission 2,300, and McClellan estimated about 3,000 at Turner's Pass alone.11
The verdicts differ. The American Battlefield Trust calls South Mountain a Union victory, while the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission rates it indecisive and says McClellan's limited activity on 15 September gave Lee time to unite his scattered divisions at Sharpsburg. Another National Park Service page calls it a Confederate defeat that delayed the Federals just long enough for Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry.12
Harpers Ferry surrendered to Jackson on 15 September. On 17 September, in the Trust's dating, the two armies met along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg. That battle is told in our article on Antietam.13
Also on 14 September
1847: the U.S. Army entered Mexico City. Winfield Scott reported that, after operations "of more than forty-eight hours' continuance", his army "hoisted, on the morning of the 14th, the colors of the United States on the walls of this palace". The fighting before the city is told in our article on Chapultepec. Scott and Grant agree that Worth's division was halted at the Alameda while Quitman's went on to the National Palace. Grant writes that the troops were fired upon by convicts released by Santa Anna, and possibly by deserters and hostile citizens; the Center of Military History adds that the army answered with close-range artillery fire.14
