1. Chapter 21 p. 459 to 466

2. The Pivotal Point: Antietam

3. Robert E. Lee, having broken the back of McClellan’s assaults on Richmond, next moved northward. Lincoln had replaced McClellan, but at the Second Battle of Bull Run (Aug , 1862), Lee crushed new commanding General John Pope’s Union forces.
Emboldened by this success, Lee daringly thrust into the North looking for a big victory that would hopefully persuade the Border States to join the South and foreign countries to intervene on behalf of the South.
At this time, Lincoln hastily reinstated General McClellan.
In early September, an incredible stroke of luck (fate?) fell upon McClellan and the North when his men found a copy of Lee’s battle plans (as wrapping paper for cigars) and were able to stop the Southerners at Antietam Creek, Maryland, on September 17, 1862 in perhaps the single bloodiest day of the Civil War.
The Battle of Antietam was particularly crucial because it probably prevented intervention by Britain and/or France on behalf of the Confederacy.
Ironically, McClellan was once again removed from his field command by Lincoln because of his refusal to pursue and finish off the retreating Lee.

5. The Pivotal Point: Antietam

6. President Lincoln at Antietam

7. The Killing Fields of Antietam
These Confederate corpses testified to the awful slaughter of the battle. The twelve-hour
fight at Antietam Creek ranks as the bloodiest single day of the war, with more than ten thousand Confederate casualties
and even more on the Union side. “At last the battle ended, ” one historian wrote, “smoke heavy in the air, the
twilight quivering with the
anguished cries of thousands of wounded men.”

9. Proclamation Without Emancipation

10. Antietam was also the Union display of power that Lincoln needed to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.
Announced on January 1, Lincoln said the slaves would be free in the seceded states (but NOT the border states as doing so might anger them into seceding too).
Now, the war wasn’t just to save the Union, it was to free the slaves as well.
This gave the war a moral purpose (end slavery) to go with its political purpose (restore the union) and favorable international diplomatic position.
Ironically, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in not-yet-conquered Southern territories, while slaves in the Border States and the conquered territories were not liberated since doing so might make them defect to the South! In effect, Lincoln freed the slaves where he couldn’t and wouldn’t free the slaves where he could.
Slavery was not officially abolished in the United States until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1865 – at war’s end.

11. The proclamation was very controversial, as many soldiers refused to fight for an “abolition war” and desertions sharply increased.
Lincoln’s administration also suffered heavy congressional defeats because of it.
However, since many slaves, upon hearing of the proclamation, left their plantations, the Emancipation Proclamation did succeed in one of its purposes: to undermine the labor of the South.
Angry Southerners cried that Lincoln was stirring up trouble and trying to incite a slave insurrection.

12. Blacks Battle Bondage

13. Many blacks, whether through fear, loyalty, lack of leadership, or strict policing, didn’t cast off their chains when they heard the Emancipation Proclamation, but many others walked off of their jobs when Union armies conquered territories that included the plantations that they worked on
At first, blacks weren’t enlisted in the army, but after the Emancipation Proclamation, and as men ran low, these men were eventually allowed in; by war’s end, black’s accounted for about 10% of the Union army.
Until 1864, Southerners refused to recognize Bback soldiers as prisoners of war, and often executed them as runaways and rebels, and in one case, at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, blacks who had surrendered were massacred.
Afterwards, vengeful black units swore to take no prisoners, crying, “Remember Fort Pillow!”

14. African Americans who fought for the Union army served bravely and suffered extremely heavy casualties, most notably the 54th Massachusetts, the first such all black regiment assembled.
Interestingly, the desperate Confederacy actually enlisted slaves into their army a month before the war ended.

16. Lee’s Last Lunge at Gettysburg

17. After Antietam, A. E. Burnside (known for his sideburns, which are, in fact, named after him, umm…in reverse!) took over the Union army and promptly suffered a horrible defeat after launching a rash frontal attack at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Dec. 13, 1862.
Next in line, “Fighting Joe” Hooker (known for “hooking” his men up with prostitutes), was badly beaten at Chancellorsville, Virginia, when Lee divided his outnumbered army into two and sent “Stonewall” Jackson to attack the Union flank.
It was arguably Lee’s most daring victory, though it came at a heavy price, for at the end of the battle, Jackson’s own men mistakenly shot him while he was riding back into camp at dusk.
He died soon afterward, and Lee had lost his right-hand man.

18. Lee now prepared to invade the North for the second and final time, intending to sneak into Pennsylvania and then back down through Washington, D.C.’s “backdoor”. The strategy was to deliver a final blow that would strengthen the Northern peace movement and convince Northerners to cease the war.
However, he was discovered at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by new General George G. Meade, and the Union and Confederate armies fought a bloody 3-day battle that the North “won.”

20. At the climactic moment of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), Confederate General George Pickett led a hopeless, bloody, and pitiful charge across a field that ended in the slaughter of his men. Ulitimately, the Battle of Gettysburg was especially significant because the Union victory meant that the Southern cause was doomed.

21. A few months later, Lincoln traveled to the battle site to make a dedication for the new cemetery. There he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, which added a moral purpose to the war. It stated that a new goal was to make sure those who’d been killed had not died in vain and is considered a great piece of American literature for its eloquence in explaining the purpose of democracy.