Antietam

The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg to the Confederacy) was the single bloodiest day in American history.  Beside the little river,  25,000 soldiers died in one awful day of battle.  Antietam is just inside Maryland, near the Potomac River about 50 miles upstream from Washington.  General Lee was encouraged by his victory at Manassas II in 1862 and so crossed the Potomac River to possibly make a play for Washington and to get out of Virginia so that the Virginia farmers could harvest their crops. Union General McClellan organized a successful plan and gave President Lincoln the victory that he desperately needed.  Union sentiment was turning against the war and Lincoln realized that he needed to make the war about morality, not just secession. He had prepared the Emancipation Proclaimation but wanted a Union victory to announce it.  Lincoln was a brilliant politician and knew that his proclaimation wouldn't free any slaves but that it would cause the British and French governments to reconsider their possible support of the South.  Slavery was enshrined in the Constitution so what Lincoln called for was that the Union Army seize the slaves as "contraband of war".  The 13th Amendment would finally abolish slavery after the war.

The Battle of Antietam had three very famous sites all in one day: the corn field, the sunken road and Burnside Bridge.

The Union soldiers marches the length the corn field here knowing that Confederate forces waited for them.

The Sunken Road.  Confedrate soldiers laid in wait on the right side of the road until the unsuspecting Union infantry marched right into their fire. When Union soldiers flanked the road it became a death trap for the rebels.

Burnside Bridge.  General Ambrose Burnside stupidly ordered his men to cross the bridge instead of spreading out and wading across the river.  They became a target for concentrated fire but they just kept coming until they overwhelmed the rebels.  Gettysburg was long thought to be the turning point of the war.  Now we understand that it was Antietam.