e they stayed during the next day, expecting
the order to advance.

Little mounds of earth, covering fallen heroes, point out the course of
our soldiers all the way from this side of the Antietam to the top of
the farthest hill. Here our men were so much more exposed than the
rebels that our loss was greater than theirs. On the right the rebel
loss was much the larger.

In the battle beyond the river, the Hawkins Zouaves, another of the
regiments distinguished in North Carolina, captured a rebel battery at
the point of the bayonet. In the rebel account we are told how the brave
General Toombs, with a whole brigade, retook the battery and defeated
this single regiment, which they magnify into an immense force.

General McClellan, with all his knowledge and great skill and success in
defensive warfare, as shown in his Peninsular campaign, after our defeat
at Gaines's Mill, is wanting in the rapidity of comprehension and
audacity which are necessary components of the highest military talent.
He waits for too many chances, and fears any risk.

In the battle of Antietam, he had fifteen thousand fresh men under Fitz
John Porter in the centre. The enemy had probably used their last
soldier, for the correspondent of the Charleston _Courier_, who has
given the best rebel account of the battle, impliedly states that they
had no reserves left. Ignorant of our unused troops, he laments the want
of a few more rebel men, and says, that if only five thousand of their
stragglers, who were on the way to Winchester, had been present, a most
decisive rebel victory would have been obtained. If McClellan had added
Fitz John Porter's reserve to Burnside's soldiers, he would have had
nearly thirty-five thousand men flanking the enemy, already beaten, and
threatening their retreat across the Potomac. Who knows what those fresh
men might not have done? Many think that the doubtful victory would have
ended in the most brilliant decided success, and the stone bridge of
Antietam would have stood in history by the side of Arcola and Lodi. But
let us be thankful for what we did achieve: never should the nation
forget how a retreating, discouraged, defeated, demoralized, and even
mutinous army, that had suffered terribly in killed and wounded, and
lost prisoners and large numbers of cannon and material, was again
reformed, and marched triumphantly against a victorious foe; achieved on
Sunday the brilliant victory of South Mountain, and on Wednesda