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The Battle Of Antietam And The Civil War

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The Battle of Antietam, or The Battle of Sharpsburg as the South would call it, took place on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. This was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. The American Civil War was beginning its second year of combat. As the Confederate States of America came close to winning the war, independence was well on its way. At first the result of the battle was controversial, as it could not be determined who won the battle and which army made the most progress towards achieving their strategic goals. The passage of time revealed that, tactically, Antietam was a draw, but that the South lost from a strategic perspective. It was one of the major turning points in the American Civil War. This was due to President Abraham Lincoln using the Union “victory” as political impetus to issue his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. As a direct result of the Battle of Antietam, the Civil War became more about abolition than the reunification of the states, and made a peaceful reconciliation between the two combatants almost impossible. The ultimate defeat of the Confederacy occurred at the Battle of Antietam, although no one knew it at the time.
September 17th 1862 is a date engrained into the minds of military tacticians and historians as the bloodiest battle to take place on American Soil. The battle, most commonly known as Antietam after the Union convention, was the first

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