During the evening McClellan issued orders looking toward the joining of a general engagement at daybreak. McLaws's Confederate division, which had been opposing Franklin, crossed the Potomac at Maryland Heights, and marched by way of Shepherdstown, reaching Sharpsburg on the morning of the 17th. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 855, 856.] Walker's division, which had come from Harper's Ferry on the 16th, extended Lee's right down the Antietam, covering the ford at which Rodman, on our side, was expected to cross. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 914.] A. P. Hill's division was the only force of the enemy completing the work at Harper's Ferry, and Franklin was ordered to leave Couch's division to observe Hill's movements from our side of the Potomac, and to bring the remainder of his corps on the field early in the morning. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 376.] In the respite given him since Sunday, Lee had therefore concentrated all his army but one division, and was better ready for the battle than McClellan, for Franklin's corps could come upon the field only after a considerable march, and he did not, in fact, reach it till ten o'clock or later. Sumner was ordered to have the Second Corps ready to march an hour before day, but he had no authority to move till explicit orders to that effect should reach him. I have said that Hooker claims in his report that the promise was made him that Mansfield's corps, when it came to reinforce him, should be under his orders. If this were so, it would unite all the troops now present which had fought in Pope's Army of Virginia. I find no trace, however, in the reports of the battle, that Hooker exercised any such command. He seems to have confined his work to the independent action of his own corps until Mansfield's death, and was himself disabled almost immediately afterward. As there were commanders of wings of the army duly designated, and two corps were now separated by a long interval from the rest in an independent turning movement, it can hardly be debated that that was the place of all others where one of them should have been, unless McClellan were there in person. Had Burnside's two corps been kept together as the right wing, the right attack could have been made a unit. If Sumner had then been directed to keep in communication with Burnside, and to advance when the latter did, nobody will doubt that Sumner would have been prompt in sustaining his comrades. But both Sumner and Burnside were made to feel that they were reduced from their proper rank, and however conscientious they might be in carrying out such orders as reached them, it was not in human nature that they should volunteer suggestions or anticipate commands. McClellan had thus thrown away the advantages, if there were any, in holding only two or three men directly responsible for the co-ordination of his movements, and had assumed the full personal responsibility of watching each phase of the battle and suiting the