It can hardly be said, then, that the Confederates had drawn much profit from the invasion of Maryland.  The capture of Harper’s Ferry made but small amends for the retreat into Virginia; and the stubborn endurance of Sharpsburg, however remarkable in the annals of war, had served no useful purpose beyond crippling for the time being the Federal army.  The battle must be classed with Aspern and Talavera; Lee’s soldiers saved their honour, but no more.  The facts were not to be disguised.  The Confederates had missed their mark.  Only a few hundred recruits had been raised in Maryland, and there had been no popular outbreak against the Union Government.  The Union army had escaped defeat; Lincoln had been able to announce to the Northern people that Lee’s victorious career had at length been checked; and 12,000 veteran soldiers, the flower of the Southern army, had fallen in battle.  Had General Longstreet’s advice been taken, and the troops withdrawn across the Potomac after the fall of Harper’s Ferry, this enormous loss, which the Confederacy could so ill afford, would certainly have been avoided.  Yet Lee was not ill-satisfied with the results of the campaign, nor did Jackson doubt the wisdom of accepting battle on the Antietam.

The hazard was great, but the stake was greater.  To achieve decisive success in war some risk must be run.  “It is impossible,” says Moltke, “to forecast the result of a pitched battle;” but this is no reason that pitched battles, if there is a fair prospect of success, should be shirked.  And in the Sharpsburg campaign the Confederates had undoubtedly fair prospects of success.  If the lost order had not fallen into McClellan’s hands, Lee in all probability would have had ample time to select his battlefield and concentrate his army; there would have been no need of forced marches, and consequently much less straggling.  Both Lee and Jackson counted on the caution of their opponent.  Both were surprised by the unwonted vigour be displayed, especially at South Mountain and in the march to Sharpsburg.  Such resolution in action, they were aware, was foreign to his nature.  “I cannot understand this move of McClellan’s,” was Jackson’s remark, when it was reported that the Federal general had boldly advanced against the strong position on South Mountain.  But neither Lee nor Jackson was aware that McClellan had exact information of their dispositions, and that the carelessness of a Confederate staff officer had done more for the Union than all the Northern scouts and spies in Maryland.  Jackson had been disposed to leave a larger margin for accidents than his commander.  He would have left Harper’s Ferry alone, and have fought the Federals in the mountains;* (* Dabney volume 2 page 302.) and he was probably right, for in the Gettysburg campaign of the following year, when Lee again crossed the Potomac, Harper’s Ferry was ignored, although occupied by a strong garrison, and neither in advance nor retreat were the Confederate