On the Confederate side the credit for averting disaster belonged to the skillful generalship of Lee and his subordinates but above all to the desperate courage of men in the ranks. “It is beyond all wonder,” wrote a Union officer after the battle, “how such men as the rebel troops can fight on as they do; that, filthy, sick, hungry, and miserable, they should prove such heroes in fight, is past explanation.”42 The fighting at Antietam was among the hardest of the war.
