Antietam

On the morning following the Battle of South Mountain, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee decided that his troops could remain in Maryland and make a stand outside of the town of Sharpsburg, deeming the landscape defendable.

He called off the retreat to Shepherdstown and issued orders to form a line that stretched from a line of hills near the Potomac not far from Taylor’s Landing and Mercersville northwest of Sharpsburg to Snavely’s Ford, near a horseshoe bend in the Antietam Creek to the southwest.

The following day, September 16th, Stonewall Jackson’s men arrived following their victory at Harpers Ferry and were added to the forces around Sharpsburg.  An attempt by Union troops to cross the Antietam resulted in a skirmish between troops which took place that evening just north of the town and continued sporadically overnight.

A Terrifying Ordeal from Dawn to Dusk

The Battle of Antietam began early in the morning on September 17th, cannonfire from the confederate line opening the fighting.  The Union forces began their advance on the Confederate lines to the northwest of Antietam, pushing the line back from a cornfield, only to be pushed back even harder in return with high casualties on both sides soon after.

The fighting continued along the Confederate line in similar fashion much of the day, with union troops gaining ground and then being pushed back again.

The morbidly iconic sunken road nicknamed “Bloody Lane” was the scene of fighting from around 9am to noon, when the Union took control of its central location in the Confederate lines.

Around the same time of day, General Burnside directed his men to begin attacking the eastern edge of the Confederate line, hoping to defeat them and then take the rest of the force to the town.  Fighting there ended around 1pm, only to begin again as the last division of Confederate troops arrived from Harpers Ferry and kept Burnside’s men fighting there until nightfall.

Lee considered making a stand the following morning, but decided to instead retreat across the river at Shepherdstown on September 18th.  An attempt to cross north again 2 days later on September 20th was thwarted.

After the Battle

The Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 was the single highest combat casualty count of any day in American military history.

Over 90,000 men entered the battlefield that day and almost 23,000 became casualties.  From one day of fighting about 3,650 soldiers lay dead, nearly 18,000 were injured and in need of medical care.  Many of those would later die of disease or complications from their wounds.

President Lincoln used the Union victory for political gain, giving the Emancipation Proclamation on September 20th.

Contrary to the common belief held by many, the proclamation did not free all  slaves.  With it, Lincoln declared that the US troops would consider slaves in confederate states to be free as of the following January 1st, but if the states held elections and had representation in Congress by that day they would not be considered in rebellion with the Union.  In practice, it gave slave states an opportunity to keep their slaves IF they returned to the Union. It did not free any slaves in states who were part of the Union, including Maryland.

It didn’t succeed in attracting any confederate states to return to the Union, but it did satisfy various demands on the administration from different political groups and movements, and still supported the policy of preventing the spread of slavery to newly claimed states and helped maintain the support of international relationships with nations where slavery was illegal.

Lincoln famously visited the battlefield in early October, meeting with McClellan who had decided not to continue chasing the Confederate army beyond Shepherdstown.  The President visited troop hospitals in Sharpsburg and then took a wagon, possibly through Boonsboro, to Frederick.  In Frederick he visited other troops and officers wounded in the Battle of Antietam who were in makeshift hospitals even that far away.  In Frederick he boarded a train back to Washington D.C.

More detail:

Learn more about the Maryland Campaign through these resources

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/maryland-campaign/
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/maryland-campaign-1862
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/south-mountain
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/antietam