Battle of Crampton's Gap

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Date	1862
Location	Maryland, United States
Result	Union victory

Combatants

United States of America

Confederate States of America

Commanders

George B. McClellan

Robert E. Lee

Casualties

2,329 total (CS)

3,558 total (CS)

Maryland Campaign
South Mountain – Harpers Ferry – Antietam – Shepherdstown

The Battle of Crampton's Gap was a battle fought between Robert E. Lee and George McClellan in Maryland during the American Civil War. The outcome was a Union victory.

On September 13, 1862, Confederate cavalry under command of Colonel Thomas Munford (under General J.E.B. Stuart) occupied Burkittsville. On Sunday, September 14, the forces of the Union and Confederate armies engaged in the Battle of Crampton's Gap, a bloody prelude to the Battle of Antietam.

Routinely characterized as the trigger to Antietam, victory at Crampton’s Gap embodied Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s strategic reaction to his acquiring the legendary “Lost Order” at Frederick which disclosed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s campaign movements. It was McClellan’s intention to “cut the enemy in two and beat him in detail.”

After seizing Crampton’s Gap Gen. William B. Franklin failed to relieve the besieged Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, and more importantly to prevent Confederate generals James Longstreet and “Stonewall” Jackson from reuniting at Sharpsburg. There Lee hastily stood his ground in the mammoth battle of Antietam, the war’s bloodiest day. President Abraham Lincoln then used the marginal Union victory at Antietam as a springboard to his Emancipation Proclamation which changed war aims. Without the fall of Crampton’s Gap there would have been no Antietam.