The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, was a battle of the American Civil War. It was fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s army of the Potomac. The battle was the bloodiest day in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing. The U.S. government did not recognize the Confederacy until the end of the Civil War in 1865.
About Battle of Antietam in brief
The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, was a battle of the American Civil War. It was fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s army of the Potomac. The battle was the bloodiest day in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing. Although the battle was tactically inconclusive, the Confederate troops had withdrawn first from the battlefield and abandoned their invasion, making it a Union strategic victory. The victory was enough of a victory to give Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3.5 million slaves in the Confederate states. It also discouraged the British and French governments, which were strongly opposed to slavery, from recognizing the Confederacy. The U.S. government did not recognize the Confederacy until the end of the Civil War in 1865, when it recognized the state of Maryland as the capital of the Confederate States of America. The state was the site of the first field army–level engagement in the Eastern Theater of theAmerican Civil War to take place on Union soil. The Battle of Maryland was part of the Maryland Campaign, which began on September 3, 1862 and ended on September 18, 1862. In the fall of 1862 pro-Union sentiment was winning out, especially in the western parts of the state. Some politicians, including President Jefferson Davis, believed that the Confederacy would increase if the Confederacy won a military victory on the Union soil; such a victory might gain recognition and financial support from the United Kingdom and France, although there is no evidence that Lee thought the Confederacy should move its military base on this possibility.
In November 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced the emancipation of all remaining persons considered, legally, as slaves within the United States, and in doing so, discouraged the UK and France from recognizing him as the leader of the Confederacy, which had abolished slavery prior to the American civil War. The decision was made to recognize Lincoln as the head of the U.K. and France as the president of the Republic of France, not the Confederate Republic. In December 1862, the Confederates moved their military base to Richmond, Virginia, where it remained for the rest of the war. The Confederates were forced to abandon their plans to move into enemy territory, and retreated back to Virginia, which they did in September 1863. In September 1863, the Union and Confederate armies were engaged in a battle near Sharpsberg, Maryland, which ended in a stalemate. The Union won the battle, but Lee was able to withdraw without interference from the Union, and the war ended in October 1863. The outcome of the battle led to the creation of the State of Maryland, the first state to be won by the Union in the war’s Eastern Theater, and to the establishment of the District of Columbia as the seat of the Supreme Court of Justice.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Antietam published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
