Military History|West Woods, Antietam — Three Lines, Twenty Minutes

John Sedgwick's division of the II Corps went into the West Woods at about half past nine on the morning of 17 September 1862 — more than 5,000 men in three lines packed close behind one another, sent to push through the trees and turn south into the Confederate left.

The formation carried its weight forward. What met it came from the side. Artillery on Hauser Ridge opened first; then brigades from Lafayette McLaws's and John G. Walker's divisions struck the exposed left flank and rear, and the leading line could not fire back through the two ranks standing behind it.

The National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust both put Union losses here above 2,200 in roughly twenty minutes. About half the men who entered the woods were killed or wounded, and the survivors were forced back out of them.

Among the units caught was the Philadelphia Brigade — four Pennsylvania regiments under Oliver Otis Howard — which the Park Service marker at this spot records losing more than 550 men in those same twenty minutes.

Thirty years later the survivors bought the ground back. The Philadelphia Brigade Association purchased eleven acres beside the Hagerstown Pike, planted trees, put up a gate, and dedicated a granite shaft on 17 September 1896, the anniversary of the fight. At over seventy feet it is the tallest monument on the battlefield, and the grove around it is the park those veterans made rather than the woodlot they fought in.

The Park Service's West Woods Trail begins across the road.

📸 Cover: the West Woods behind the Dunker Church, with the Ohio Monument among the trees — area view, not the Philadelphia Brigade Monument itself. Photo by Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.