Today is the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. In their effort to split apart the Union to preserve their right to own other people, the rebel forces, fighting in Maryland, killed approximately 2,108 American soldiers and wounded approximately 10,000 more. The rebels themselves had casualties of 10,318 with 1,546 dead.
The battle was a tactical stalemate – in no small part because of Union General McClellan’s extreme cautiousness – but forced the rebels out of Maryland and gave President Lincoln sufficient political cover to issue the Emancipation Proclamation five days later. That Proclamation did not, technically, free very many people because it applied mainly to areas in rebellion and not under the control of the U.S. government. But, as the Union re-gained control of the territory in rebellion, the slaves in those areas were freed. This also had the strategic effect of dissuading France and England from recognizing the Confederates. With the Union having won at least a nominal victory and explicitly tied its efforts to ending slavery, France and England couldn’t support the Confederacy. Far from seeing it as a positive good worth committing treason over – as the officials in the state governments of the South had done – France and England had abolished the practice.
The Confederates were on their own. They were weaker and in the wrong. Eventually, the United States would win and preserve our country.
What? No comments from the SotC gallery?
I may have alienated them over the years by my intemperance on this issue.
Driving south on I-70 to Frederick, Md. in July we hit a terrible traffic jam north of Hagerstown. We decided to take a back road and low and behold we found ourselves in Sharpsburg. Md. near the Antietam Battlefield. What an incredible place, frozen in time. I grew up in Maryland and had never been there. Like Gettysburg, you cannot go to the place itself without it speaking to you about the impact of the battle on the next 150 years of our history.
And, not just our history. France and England might have been very sorry 55 years later without the AEF in France had they chosen to recognize the Confederacy in 1862.
“Lafayette we are here . . . FOR PAYBACK!”
Plenty of German immigrants in the North. In WWI, it might not have taken so much to abstain, or join another side.
What if transatlantic cables had not all originated in England? The propaganda war in the North might have looked much different.