About daylight, Confederate artillery opened up. The Wisconsin men were rousted from deep sleep. "We had marched ten rods, when whiz-z-z ! bang ! burst a shell over our heads; then another; then a percussion shell struck and exploded in the very center of the moving mass of men. It killed two men and wounded eleven...Thus opened the great battle of Antietam,… (on) September 17th, 1862."
The regiment soon came under withering fire from Rebels in the woods. “Company I under Capt John Kellogg heroically dashed across the field and drove them out.” Captain Edwin Brown of Company E was killed as his men passed through a gate. Years later, Major Dawes was haunted by the image of that young officer "shouting in a loud imperative voice the order I had given him...(as) a bullet passed into his open mouth, and the voice is silenced forever.”
"Colonel Bragg was shot...and his nerve, in standing up under the shock until he had (repositioned) his men..., was wonderful." With Bragg wounded, Dawes took over command of the regiment. "I felt a great sense of responsibility, when thrown thus suddenly in command..." Hours later the men were elated when Bragg rejoined them despite being wounded. “We had thought him dead.”
Heavy enemy fire raked through their lines” like a scythe”, felling dozens. "But we...pushed on, loading, firing, and shouting as we advanced. There was...a reckless disregard of life, of everything but victory.” Though forced back, Dawes regrouped the remaining men around the Wisconsin colors. Nearly half of the original 314 officers and men had been killed or wounded. They fought on, clearing out rebels threatening an artillery position.
Captain Werner Von Bachelle, commanding Company F, was shot dead. He was respected by all; his loss was deeply felt. A Newfoundland dog “was his constant companion and was with him when he fell. Our men left the body when under fire. The dog stayed with his fallen master and was found two days later lying dead upon his body. We buried him with his master.”
Another prominent Mariettan gave his life at Antietam. Colonel Melvin Clarke commanded the 36th Ohio Volunteer regiment, formed at Lower Salem in 1861. He was a successful lawyer who helped recruit Washington County men for the Union Army. Clarke soon felt obligated to enlist himself.
Late in the day at Antietam, the 36th under Clarke was part of an attack on the Confederate units south of Sharpsburg. They ran into heavy musketry and artillery fire. Clarke was hit with a large shell and died in minutes. The regiment was forced back under heavy fire, but they carried Clarke’s body with them in a blanket, so great was his men’s admiration and respect for him.
Fighting waned as night fell. September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day in American history before or since, with a tally of 22,727 dead, wounded, or missing on both sides. Major Hiram. F. Devol of the Ohio 36th Volunteers recalled: “That night the groans and cries of the wounded of both armies between the two lines could be heard, but no help could safely reach them.”
Two days later the Confederates withdrew. The carnage was the worst that Rufus Dawes experienced before or after. Bodies were stacked in piles. Dawes noticed a horse appearing to rise. “Its head was held proudly aloft, and its fore legs set firmly forward. But like all surrounding it…, the horse was dead.”
Photos of dead soldiers by Mathew Brady brought home the horror of war to many Americans, from civilwarmonitor.com
Army Correspondent Charles Coffin recalled seeing a dead Union soldier near the Dunkard Church “with his face turned upward, and his pocket Bible open upon his breast. I lifted the volume and read the words: 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’”
Dawes wrote to his mother on Sept 18: “My Dear Mother : — I have come safely through two more terrible engagements with the enemy...Our splendid regiment is almost destroyed…nearly four hundred men killed and wounded in the battles…The men have stood like iron.” Relief, anguish, and pride are evident in his words.
Rufus Dawes was mustered out of the Army on August 10, 1864. He was noted for his service in the famed Iron Brigade, (so named when General Burnside observed that the Wisconsin units stood like iron when under attack), especially at Gettysburg, and in 1866 was breveted as a Brigadier General. He returned to Marietta where he operated a lumber business, was a Marietta College trustee, and served a single term in Congress from Ohio’s 15th district. He continued the Dawes family’s long tradition of success in business and civic leadership. One document suggests that Rufus Dawes (like many thousands of other veterans) suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, a condition not understood at the time.
