Joseph Hooker’s First Corps, approximately 8,000 men, advanced south through the Cornfield where, “the hostile battle lines opened a tremendous fire upon each other.” Initially knocked back, Hooker’s men regrouped and began to push Gen. James Dougherty, 128th Pennsylvania Infantry, wounded in the Cornfield "Through a shower of bullets and shells, it was only the thoughts of home that brought me from that place." Pvt. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield." Joseph Hooker remembered that "every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their ranks a few moments before. John Bell Hood wrote: "It was here that I witnessed the most terrible clash of arms, by far, that has occurred during the war." Union Gen. More than 25,000 soldiers fought in and around the Cornfield. Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of soldiers, canteens and haversacks are riddled with bullets, the dead and wounded go down in scores." One soldier remembered: "The air seems full of leaden missiles.
The Cornfield changed hands again and again as both sides attacked and counterattacked. For the next four hours the Cornfield was the center of a storm of lead, iron, and flame as Federal soldiers from the First and Twelfth Corps clashed with Lee's men.
The single, bloodiest day in American History had begun in earnest. As Union soldiers stepped out of the Cornfield at dawn, September 17, 1862, Confederate troops unleashed a horrific volley.
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