In 1866 Private Alexander Hunter, formerly of the 17th Virginia Infantry’s famed “Alexandria Riflemen,” wrote an illuminating personal account of his Civil War experiences, “Four Years in the Ranks.” That account was later used for Hunter’s popular “novel” Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, published in 1905, and was the source of the article “Crossing the Rubicon” in America’s Civil War’s September 2021 issue, which recounted the experiences of the cocky, daring “High Private” at Second Manassas, Ox Hill (Chantilly), and during the Army of Northern Virginia’s march to Sharpsburg, Md., in August–September 1862.
The pages from Hunter’s 1866 manuscript on his time with the Alexandria Riflemen (Company A) are mostly missing for the Battle of Antietam (known better to Southerners as the Battle of Sharpsburg). Possibly the relevant pages were taken out to be used, and then misplaced, for Hunter’s articles in the Southern Historical Society Papers in 1882-83 (“A High Private’s Sketch of Sharpsburg,” Volumes 10–11) and later a shorter version, titled “The Battle of Antietam,” in SHSP for 1903’s Volume 31. His colorful writings of the Army of Northern Virginia’s attempted liberation of Maryland from Federal control ranged from humorous to horrific.
As with many veterans, story details could change over the years. Hunter was no exception, as he wrote in the decades following the war mildly conflicting accounts about the combat south of Sharpsburg late on September 17. Published below is an assortment of Hunter’s writings of that period, with paragraph breaks added in places to help readability.
The night of September 14, 1862, in the wake of a bloody day of fighting at South Mountain, the worn-out and famished Alexander Hunter could do little more than collapse at an old sawmill on the side of the Sharpsburg Road. He would be awakened the following morning by his 17th Virginia comrades, marching to the west from Boonsboro. The 17th had become a shell of itself: just 46 muskets and nine officers from a regiment that only a year earlier had boasted 880 men. These enduring veterans were part of James Longstreet’s old “First Brigade,” now commanded by Brig. Gen. James Kemper—a brigade, Hunter would write, whose strength had fallen to merely 320 effectives from 2,800 or so men four months earlier.
[T]he brigade marched toward Sharpsburg. Squads from the different companies obtained permission to forage for themselves and comrades. Being the only private left in my company, I joined two expert foragers of Company H….
On our way across the field we stopped at a fine looking mansion… [and] knocked at the
