Virtual Tour of Sharpsburg: The Burnside Bridge

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From the Bloody Lane, the National Park tour route sends you down rolling hills along Rodman Avenue towards Burnside Bridge Road. While the Sharpsburg battlefield lacks any of the massive hills featured at battlefields like Gettysburg, the ground is very undulating. This image is a good example of the sort of rolling ground at Sharpsburg. Along your way down to the bridge, you will pass the Sherrick farm at the intersection of Rodman Avenue and the Boonsboro Pike.

Tour stop nine is the Burnside Bridge. The Burnside Bridge is probably the most famous and photographed site at Sharpsburg.

Also known as the Lower Bridge and the Rohrbach Bridge (after a nearby farmer), this stone bridge spans Antietam creek. The bridge is located southeast of the town of Sharpsburg. Here the Union Ninth Corps commanded by General Ambrose Burnside massed for the afternoon assault.

Opposing Burnside were a brigade of Georgians of D.R. Jones' Division under the command of Robert Toombs. While numbering just a few hundred men, the area's topography highly favored the Georgia defenders.

The road approaching the bridge swings east and across the stone span. But in so doing it drops in between two high bluffs. The depression between the bluffs acts almost as a funnel. The Georgians, perched on the heights west and above the bridge in rifle pits, were in an excellent defensive position.

(The view to the left is from the position of the Georgians on the heights west of the bridge. To actually walk across the bridge, you have to walk down a rather steep incline and a set of stairs from the parking lot on top of the western bluffs.)

The bridge itself is interesting and worth of note. It is made of stone and was built around 1830. It is 125 feet across and 12 feet wide. During the time of the battle, as mentioned, it would have been known as Rohrbach's Bridge or as the Lower Bridge (there is also, as you might guess, an Upper and Middle bridge). The Rohrbach farmstead was located just to the northeast and the road across the bridge was known as Rohrbach's Road. Only after the battle would it take on its most common name: the Burnside Bridge.

The bridge actually remained in service until the 1960s. At that time, the road over the bridge was rerouted when a bypass was built a bit north of the bridge. The bridge is in a remarable state of preservation and there is even a witness tree nearby.

Burnside began to try and cross the Lower Bridge at about 9:30 AM. The 450 sharpshooters under Toombs were able to hold him back until 1 o'clock in the afternoon. This is a tribute to both the tenacity of the Georgians and to the incompetence of the Union command -- the creek could have been easily forded a bit downstream. Rodman's Division of the IX Corps eventually found this ford and was able to flank the Confederates -- which helped break the bottleneck at the bridge.

This is the view the Union troops attacking Burnside's bridge would have had. Note the imposing heights in front of them.

A soldier in the 2nd Georgia recalled the fighting: "We went into the fight with only 89 muskets and had eight officers and 35 men killed and wounded. So many of the men were shot down that the officers filled their places and loaded and fired their guns."

Having finally made it across the bridge, Burnside now delayed his attack by two hours. Like McClellan's failure to attack in the center after Rodes' retreat, this was a critical and fatal error.

View looking towards the Union lines (east) from the Confederate side of the bridge.

Finally, at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Burnside renewed his attack. The Federals moved towards the town of Sharpsburg. The weakened Confederate line gave way before them. D.R. Jones' brigades -- the last troops between Burnside and Sharpsburg -- were driven out of the way and scurried back towards the streets of the town.

Another view looking towards the Union lines (east) from the Confederate side of the bridge.

It appeared now that despite Burnside's delay that he was poised to win the day. Only a mere half mile and some Confederate artillery lay between the Union and cutting off Lee's line of retreat across the Potomac River. It looked like disaster and destruction loomed again for the hard-pressed Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Monuments in the Area

50th Pennsylvania Infantry

Like many Pennsylvania monuments on the battlefield, the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry dedicated their monument on September 17, 1904. The monument is located a good distance north of the Burnside Bridge along Rodman Avenue. From Berks, Schuylkill, Bradford, Susquehanna, Lancaster and Luzerne Counties, the 50th Pennsylvania suffered 57 casualties at Sharpsburg.

The figure on the monument is Colonel Benjamin C. Christ. He commanded the regiment at Sharpsburg and was from Minersville, Pennsylvania. He reached the rank of brevet Brigadier General.

William McKinley Monument

Dedicated on October 13, 1903, this tall monument is dedicated to the memory of William McKinley. It is located south and west of the Burnside Bridge near the parking lot. A plaque located on the side of the monument depicts William McKinley both as a soldier and as President. The text reads in part: Sergeant McKinley was a Commissary Sergeant with the 23rd Ohio of Colonel Hugh Ewing’s Brigade. During the battle, Sergeant McKinley bravely served the soldiers in his regiment. Another U.S. President from the same Civil War regiment, Rutherford B. Hayes said that, "Early in the afternoon, naturally enough, with the exertion required of the men, they were famished and thirsty, and to some extent broken in spirit. The commissary department of that brigade was under Sergeant McKinley’s administration and personal supervision. From his hands every man in the regiment was served with hot coffee and warm meats.... He passed under fire and delivered, with his own hands, these things, so essential for the men for whom he was laboring."

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