TC04

“Confounded Bridge” was the second episode of the first season of El’s Belles airing Saturday, September 10, 1949 at 7:30 PM EDT/PDT and 6:30 PM in the Mountain and Central time zones. The show recreated the brutal fighting on September 17, 1862 at “Burnside’s Bridge” near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The fiasco delayed IX Corps for three hours and dashed General McClellan’s hopes for a clear tactical victory. This segment was the most violent half-hour broadcast on American television up that that time.

As in the pilot, the first four commercial breaks lasted one minute, with a single sponsor, Allen B. DuMont Laboratories, which had created the network in a bid to sell more television sets. The final two minute commercial break at the end of the program made audiences acquainted with the producer of the show, the B’nei Hannebim Institute, while offering additional historical background for the episode and showing clips of the production.

By the mysterious actions of one Miriam Haivri of Congregation Beth Hannebim a written copy of General Lee’s maneuvering orders had fallen into his enemy hands. Lee was forced to quickly end the Maryland Campaign and draw his army back together or risk losing it all. But high water foiled his plan to ford the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, which surrounded his army on three sides, so, like a cornered animal, Lee turned to fight. What followed was the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the war.

Muskets fell like rows of dominoes atop stone walls built on the banks of a wide but quiet creek. Reaching the horizontal they fired, burning eyes with the pungent smoke of spent powder. Downstream the walls became the rails of a stone bridge. Union and Confederate soldiers converged on foot, shouting as they merged. The fighting deteriorated to bayonet thrusts and even fisticuffs. The federals had greater momentum and nearly reached the other side of the bridge before the rebels bounced them back.

Under fire the boys in blue trod in reverse over a layer of bodies one deep. Some were dead, others writhed with broken bones or lead balls lodged in their innards. Some of the fallen men had survived the battle of Shiloh where the war first attained this level of savagery.

A tube loaded with canister shot lined up on the long axis of the bridge and mowed down rebels like grass to form a second layer of bodies. Some of these men had survived the artillery hell of Malvern Hill in Virginia.

Two guns on the west side of the creek upstream maimed the Union gunners with bursting shells and another tube fired solid shot. The Union gun became a pile of splinters and dented steel. Then followed a Rebel infantry counter-assault. Quickly the men in gray gained most of the bridge, which at that point had become an abattoir.

A colonel on the Union side was shot, but to the wonderment of his men he stood up again with a lead ball lodged in his Bible. With this divine sanction the officer led yet another attack. Union soldiers standing on the mounting pile of bodies swapped empty muskets for loaded ones handed up to them like water in a fire bucket brigade.

As the fighting dragged on the rebel infantry ran low on gunpowder and the senior officer of their brigade realized the bridge was lost. He pulled back his artillery under the cover of fresh troops firing in a rearguard action. Burnside himself crossed over Antietam Creek, thrilled to see the retreating gray backs. He ordered a captain to secure a horse and ride to headquarters to report a bridgehead had been secured.

But the young officer saw how the bridge was stacked with bodies and refused to further desecrate the dead of either side. Instead he splashed across the stream on foot, bypassing all the carnage on the bridge. In so doing the captain suffered little hardship. After all, as the local farmers all well knew, the water in the creek was only knee deep.