The Emancipation Proclamation is 150 Years Old 02:04 PM EDT One
hundred fifty years ago Monday, on September 17, 1862, the Union
army commanded by Major General George McClellan met a
Confederate force under Robert E. Lee at Antietam Creek in
western Maryland, outside the town of Sharpsburg. For 12 hours,
87,000 Union soldiers launched a series of attacks against
45,000 Confederates. The result was a staggering loss of human
life. When dark approached and the fighting ended, almost 25,000
were dead, wounded, or missing. Neither before nor since have
more Americans been killed in a single day. But when it was
over, Lee's advance into Northern territory had been halted.
Union forces held the field. And in the space of that victory,
President Abraham Lincoln issued the initial Emancipation
Proclamation -- specifically joining the cause of the Union with
the advancement of freedom. President Lincoln signed that
preliminary order five days after Antietam -- on September 22.
When it went into effect on January 1, 1