On September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam produced nearly 23,000 casualties in a single day — the bloodiest in American military history — and ended in a military stalemate. Lee retreated. McClellan didn't pursue. But Lincoln interpreted the Confederate withdrawal as a Union victory and used it to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days later, transforming the Civil War from a fight to preserve the Union into a fight to end slavery. This episode of Sidequests covers Antietam: the lost Confederate orders that should have given McClellan a decisive advantage, the brutal fighting at the Cornfield and Bloody Lane, and how a bloody draw on the battlefield became one of the most consequential political moments in American history.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}