This is the final part of a series about the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history and, more importantly, the battle that changed the purpose of the Civil War. Part 1, found here, describes how George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, accidentally learned the position of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on its invasion of the North and moved, albeit not briskly, to trap it. Part 2, here, relates how McClellan’s delays allowed Lee to regroup along Antietam Creek in western Maryland and how Abraham Lincoln hoped for a Union victory so he could make a bold announcement. Part 3, here, described the battle itself, the several opportunities to deliver a crushing blow that McClellan ignored, and the fortunate timing that saved the Confederate army that day.

             If you want to read more about the process by which Lincoln reached this decision and his reasons for freeing only the slaves in the rebellious South, go here to a post I wrote last year (and win my undying admiration and gratitude).  

The battle had badly damaged both armies. Lee patched together his defensive line in case McClellan attacked again. McClellan wired Washington to ask for more troops, even though his army already outnumbered Lee’s and even though he had two army corps, six divisions, that had not fought—to Lee’s none. 

On the night of the 18th, after McClellan had offered no more fight, Lee finally withdrew back over the Potomac River. Some skirmishing followed over the next few days, but McClellan essentially let Lee slip away unopposed. The Maryland invasion had ended in failure.

The battle had scarred the armies. Lee’s force had lost around 2,700 killed, 9,000 wounded, and another 2,000 missing, leaving him scarcely 30,000 soldiers unhurt and intact. McClellan’s army had around 2,000 killed, 9,400 wounded, and about 1,000 missing. The death toll of nearly 5,000—which would be increased by those who later died of their wounds—was more than in any other single day of this war or any other. In fact, the death toll exceeded the battle deaths of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War combined. 

All on one day. All within just a few square miles of rolling hill country in western Maryland.  

The reality of those deaths came home to some American civilians, at least, in a new and memorable way. In October, just a few weeks after the battle, photographer Matthew Brady unveiled an exhibit in New York City of photographs taken (largely by Alexander Gardner) after the battle.

These stark shots of corpses shocked those who viewed them. Some of the photos, such as one of the Bloody Lane, showed a line of dead body after dead body that stretched out of the frame. “We recognized the battlefield as a reality, but a remote one, like a funeral next door,” one shaken visitor wrote later. “Mr. Brady has brought home the terrible earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards, he has done something very like it.”  

One more casualty would fall that autumn. Lincoln fretted in the weeks after the battle as McClellan did nothing to pursue Lee. In fact, his army—nearly 90,000 strong—was still in western Maryland. In early October, the president went to visit the army—which he wryly called “the general’s bodyguard” and talk to its commander. After his return to Washington, an order was sent to army headquarters: “The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south.” McClellan found it possible to ignore the point-blank instruction. 

Adding insult to injury, Lincoln had to watch as news came in of another Confederate exploit. Lee’s cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart rode into Pennsylvania, caused some damage in the south central town of Chambersburg, and rode back to safety, circling McClellan’s army in the process. The raid meant nothing in military terms, but rubbed salt in Northern wounds. 

Lincoln wrote McClellan: “You are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is by the route you can and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on the march? . . . I would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say ‘try’; if we never try, we shall never succeed.”  

Late in October, Lincoln’s exasperation at the stationary army grew. He sent McClellan a wire urging action with the following testy comment : “I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue[s] anything?” The next day, McClellan’s army finally moved into Virginia, though it took more than a week to complete the move. 

By early November, though, Lincoln’s patience had evaporated. Once Lee’s army slipped in, uncontested, between McClelland and Richmond, Lincoln fired him. As he explained to one protesting Cabinet member, “He has got the slows, Mr. Blair.” 

Alas, Lincoln replaced McClellan with Ambrose Burnside, who would, before the year was out, and at horrific cost to his army, prove that his ineptitude at Antietam was not the full measure of his folly.  

Earlier, though, just five days after the battle, Lincoln had taken another action that would have more lasting impact. After reaching the decision to free the slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln had taken Secretary of State William Seward’s advice to wait for a military victory to announce the new policy.

Antietam, though not the crushing blow to the rebellion that Lincoln had hoped for, provided the president enough of an pretext: the Confederacy’s chief army, after all, had been sent packing back to the South. 

On September 22, just five days after the battle, Lincoln met with his Cabinet and informed them of his decision to announce the emancipation policy. “I think the time has come,” he said. “I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked.”  

Montgomery Blair warned that the policy would cause trouble in the border states and give the Democrats political ammunition. Lincoln dismissed the objections. The border states, he said, would back the policy in time. As for the Democrats, “their clubs would be used against us take what course we might.” 

And so, on September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, stating that on January 1 following, should the rebellion still be in effect, “all persons held as slaves, within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”  

The war had taken a new cause, not just to restore the Union, but to end slavery. 

Words © 2010 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.