In the slaughter which followed Sedgwick was wounded and his
command was saved from annihilation with the loss of two thousand men.
While this desperate struggle raged in the Union right, the centre was
the scene of a still bloodier one. French and Richardson charged the
Confederate position with reckless valor. A sunken road lay across the
field over which they rushed. For four terrible hours the men in grey
held this sunken road until it was piled with their bodies, and when the
last charge of the resistless blue lines took it, they found but three
hundred living men who had been holding it against the assaults of five
thousand--and "Bloody Lane" became immortal in American history.
It was now one o'clock and the men had fought almost continuously since
the sun rose. The infantry fire slowly slackened and ceased in the Union
right and centre.
Burnside, who held the Union left, was ordered to advance by the
capture of the stone bridge over the Antietam. But a single brigade
under General Toombs guarding this bridge held an army at bay and it was
one o'clock before the bridge was captured.
Burnside now pushed his division up the heights against Sharpsburg to
cut Lee's line of retreat. The Confederates held their ground with
desperate courage, though outnumbered here three to one.
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