Slotkin: 150 years ago, America's bloodiest battle The Battle of
Antietam, on Sept. 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day of combat in
American history. On D-Day, U.S. forces suffered 5,200
casualties out of a force of 50,000, roughly 10 percent of those
engaged. At Antietam the Union army lost 13,000 out of 73,000
(16.518 percent), and the Confederates 12,500 out of fewer than
40,000, or about 30 percent. The battle ended in stalemate, but
became a technical Union victory when the battered Confederates
retreated to Virginia. The one thing accomplished by all that
bloodshed was that the narrow victory enabled Abraham Lincoln to
issue the Emancipation Proclamation -- a decision that
transformed the Civil War into a social revolution, and changed
the course of the war and of American history. Knowing as we do
the outcome of that decision, we may fail to appreciate the
risks Lincoln ran and the kind of courage he displayed. He had
to face not only the rage of Southerners and the strong
opposition of many Northerners,