Every brigade commander on the Southern side had been killed or wounded.

Nearly all the colonels had fallen, but Jackson's men still fought with a fire and spirit that only such a leader as he could inspire.
It seemed to Dick that the whole world was on fire with the flash of cannon and rifles.

The roar and crash came from not only in front and around him, but far down the side, where the main army of McClellan was advancing directly upon the Antietam, and the stone bridges which the Confederates had not found time to tear down.
There stood Lee, supremely confident that if his lieutenant, Jackson, could not hold the Northern opening into the peninsula nobody could.
His men, who knew the desperate nature of the crisis, said that they had never seen him more confident than he was that day.
On the ridge just south of the village was a huge limestone bowlder, and Lee, field glasses in hand, stood on it.

He listened a while to the growing thunder of the battle in the north--the Dunkard church, around which Jackson and Hooker were fighting so desperately, was a mile away--but he soon turned his attention to the blue masses across the Antietam.
The Southern commander faced the Antietam with the hard-hitting Longstreet on his right, his left being composed of the forces of Jackson, already in furious conflict.

Nothing escaped him.