“Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.”
Stephen W. Sears
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam
The New York Times coverage from 1862 is online.
Antietam gave Lincoln the military victory he needed to issue his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd. It stated that slaves in states or parts of states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. The objective of the war had changed.
America’s bloodiest day:
| Killed: | Union 2,000 | Confederate 1,550 | Total Killed: 3,650 |
| Wounded: | Union 9,550 | Confederate 7,750 | Total Wounded: 17,300 |
| Missing/Captured: | Union 750 | Confederate 1,020 | Total Missing: 1,770 |
| Total: | Union 12,400 | Confederate 10,320 | Total Casualties: 22,720 |
As a rule of thumb, about 20% of the wounded died of their wounds and 30% of the missing had been killed (in the days before dog-tags to identify the dead). Accordingly, an estimate of the total dead from the one-day battle: 7,640.
Source: National Park Service
The best single volume on Antietam is Stephen Sears’s Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Sears wrote a good article on the battle in 1989: Antietam: The Terrible Price of Freedom.
I’m off to the bookstore! One of the disadvantages to growing up in the south, you hear so much about the civil war as part of the school curriculum that you miss a great deal of the lessons to be learned. Turns into a steady white noise that prevents picking out details.
Fun Fact: First President to circumvent Congress and take us to war – even barring Congress seating until he was ready: Abraham Lincoln.