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This full 360° panoramic photograph shows Burnside's Bridge at the Antietam National Battlefield. It was here that General Ambrose E. Burnside commanding the 9th Corps of the Army of the Potomac struggled throughout the day of September 17, 1862 to cross Antietam Creek and attack the right flank of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In a series of abortive assaults by Burnside, the well-positioned Confederates decimated the Union attackers. Early in the afternoon Burnside ordered his troops to take the bridge "at all hazards". By this time Union counterfire had taken its toll and the Confederates began to pull back. Several Union regiments charged across the bridge to gain a foothold west of the creek. But the delay had given Confederate General A. P. Hill the time he needed to march his division from Harpers Ferry to Sharpsburg, and later push Burnside's corps again back to the Antietam and keep a line of retreat to the Potomac River open to Lee's battered army.
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