Arizona weekly citizen., 1882-10-01
Franklin at Antletam.

The following graphic description of the conflict IS taken from an admlrsole article ID the Philadelphia Weekly Times: "We arrive in front of Dunkers 8 Church about noon. Here SIX dlvlslOns had been ground away that morning, the field having been taken thrice and twice lost during the battle Here Lee had put in Jackson with his remnant first, then Walker, Anderson aud Mc- Laws. as they arrived from Harpe-s Ferry. The sight of our fresh corps moving up in double lines, brigade fron., gladdened the hard pressed men of Sedgwick, Hooper and Mansfield, who bravely fought on with their com manders down, but Jackson welcomed us with overs of shell Smiths d. vision advanced up to the church and Irwin's brigade made of the brilliant charges of the field. Slocum tested be- hind a breastwork formed by the em- bankment of sunken road, and the batteries took position to support a desperate charge of thi- whole com mand. All ears were strained for the signal of Burnside's attack on the left, wben We were tO dash forward for the key position, a rOcky-ledged forest be- hind the church, which took In reverse Lees linesin front of Porter and Burn side. T signal did not come.
 Franklin was just behind our rIght in strip of wood that frinGes the fs- nous cOrnfeld where the "dead regI- ment" (COnfederate) met a terrible fate that morning. Volumes would not describe the scenes around us. The dead of both armies covered the field, and there was not room tO step between the bodies. The Confederate left had been turned by aid of bare ridge extending some hundred yards across 1t, and the possession Of this height for batteries was the aim of the encounters of the day. It was held now by the debris of Summers three corps, which had been used up there. Soon past noon a plalu man III faded field blouse came up from the center picking his way over fallen trees and bOulderS. and stopping anon so peer along the battle front. It WAS Mcclellan, unattended, and he walked up to Franklin, and after hurried con sultatiOn, word came to us. "Atten- tiouT We were to charge without wait ing for Burnside.
 Suddenly a comm ton Is noticed along the hither slOOp of The ridge where Summers wing stretches away on an obllque, over the ridge, across the turnpike and into the woods north of the church. X cJuri i5 rushing swiftly along, climbing over the debris choking the field, a field such as imaginative pictures would not over color; dead horses, broken guns, crushed carriages, all strewu among an army of dead and wounded. He startles the soldiers along hls pathway and every eye follows him, resting at las: on Franklin's most imposing battalions. The COnfederates catch the alarm and their batteries and sharp. shooters talk the offensive. The courier bears a message from Sumner, im- plOring Mcclellan not tC send us in. The right wing IS fused up," he says, and only holding on by the menace of Franklin and his batteries. Not an officer, not a soldier in the Sixth Corps but felt that now was the moment tO drive the wedge home, tO fight to the lRsG man and give the lie 10 the traducers of Mcclellan and his heroic Army of the Peninsula. That corps let loose than would have pierced the citadel held by Jackson or 1t would have been wiped of the rolls of the Army of the Potomac by Jackson's bullets.
 Eight it out. here and, and nowr' that was on every heru's hps. Franklin urged-he ragged; for the sting that pricked his men hurt him. Mcclellan hesitated and finally deferred till next day to quiet Sumner. Thus curbed, Franklin advanced his guns under sup port of SlOcum, and loaned other troops 10 piece ont the broken lines of the stricken corps. A brigade goes to French, battery to Hancock, who had left us for division under SedgSick, and the rest is posted in places, in- active in the face of galling fl Of bullets and shells. During the night at a council of war, Franklin again urges the imperative need of a charge on hls front, but Buruside's miscarriage at the lower bridge, and other reasons which time has sanctioned as well taken, de- tered Mcclellan from the great risk Maryland was delivered, and for the equivocal gain of crippling a few thousand of Lees men. with the cer- tain loss of three to one. Mcclellan could only put his honor and that of Franklin's command in the balance.