The attacking division would have made a fine sight if it had been maneuvering on a parade ground, but on a battlefield the serried mass of men was an invitation to the tired rebel gunners waiting beyond the turnpike. The cannons opened fire. Case shot cracked gray above the attackers’ heads while solid shot whipped through rank after rank of men, one shot sufficient to kill or wound a dozen men. The Yankees pushed on, closing their ranks after each bloody strike and leaving behind them a new trail of dead and injured men.

The Pennsylvanians around the Dunker church heard the guns and prayed that someone was coming to their support. Their attack had driven a deep wedge into the center of the rebel army, but their ammunition was now desperately low. Their colonel had sent for help, but none was coming. Skirmishers probed the woods around the church, looking for other Northern troops who might have found shelter in the trees, but there were no allies within reach and one by one the Pennsylvania skirmishers were killed or wounded by rebel sharpshooters. The Northern colonel looked behind him for help while his pickets reported the noise of troops gathering in the surrounding trees.

The troops were rebels. They were fresh and unblooded this day. In the dawn they had been guarding the bridges and fords across the lower part of the creek, but no Yankee attack had materialized and so, in desperation, Lee had stripped his southern defenses of every man that could be spared. Those men had marched through Sharpsburg and up the hill to where Jackson now hurled them at the Dunker church.

The rebel yell echoed in the woods. Volleys clattered against the church walls, thumped into trees, and ricocheted off stone. For a time the Pennsylvanians resisted the tightening ring, but they were isolated and outnumbered and finally they broke. They ran, abandoning their wounded, crossing the turnpike, and not stopping until they were out of range of the rebel rifles.

The rebels did not pursue. Jackson had freed himself of the Pennsylvanians and now he turned his men north to where the great parade ground attack had pushed across the cornfield and into the northern part of the West Woods. The attacking division had suffered horribly from the rebel guns, but enough men survived to reach the trees and sweep the rebel gunners out of their path. A handful of Confederate skirmishers fled, and suddenly the Stars and Stripes were being carried into the West Woods. “Keep going!” officers shouted, knowing their men would be tempted to stay in the shelter of the bullet-flecked trunks. “Keep going!” The three battle lines marched on westward as if they planned to push clean on down to the Potomac, but the guns Lee had placed behind the wood greeted their appearance at the tree line. Another cornfield lay beyond the wood and it was filled with rebel sharpshooters who, concealed by the standing corn, poured rifle fire into the blue ranks. The Yankees paused to reform lines that had been tangled by their advance through the trees.