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The Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam examines Robert E. Lee’s 1862 invasion of Maryland and the fighting near Sharpsburg on 17 September, the bloodiest single day in American military history. Union commander George B. McClellan possessed a numerical advantage and unusually valuable intelligence after a copy of Lee’s orders was discovered, yet the battle developed as a succession of separate assaults rather than one decisive attack.
Fighting around the Cornfield, the Sunken Road and Burnside Bridge produced enormous casualties without destroying either army. Lee withdrew across the Potomac afterwards, allowing Abraham Lincoln to present the result as the strategic success he needed before announcing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The book places the battle within the wider Maryland Campaign and explains why a tactical stalemate became a politically important Union check on Confederate momentum.
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