The Deadliest Day In The Civil War: Antietam
Wikimedia CommonsThe Battle of Antietam yielded 23,000 casualties with 3,650 killed in action.
The Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, marked a Civil War sea change. Until then, most battles had put Confederates on the defensive as the Union Army marched south. Fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, it was the first battle of the war fought on Union soil. At the time, it would become the deadliest day in American history.
With a triumph in the Second Battle of Bull Run behind him, Confederate General Robert E. Lee confidently marched his men into Maryland on Sept. 3. Both he and Confederate President Jefferson Davis believed another victory in the north would spur France and Britain to side with the South, who supplied the European nations with invaluable cotton.
Lee also believed that an invasion of a Union state would see Lincoln lose congressional support and yield domestic support for the Confederacy. However, when Union soldiers Private Barton Mitchell and Sergeant John Blood discovered a document detailing his troop movements on Sept. 13, the armies converged at Antietam Creek.
Formerly known as “Sunken Road,” this embankment was christened “Bloody Lane” after 5,000 corpses filled it within three hours of the battle.
Union General George McClellan’s Army confronted Lee’s men at dawn. The Confederates were not only sickly and exhausted from battle but outnumbered by two to one. A mere eight hours after the bloody battle began on a 30-acre cornfield along the creek, there were more than 15,000 casualties on both sides.
Around 2,600 Confederates had fortified themselves in a farm lane known as “Sunken Road.” Close range slaughter began when Union Major General William H. French arrived with 5,500 men — and turned that embankment into an alley of death christened “Bloody Lane” consisting of 5,000 corpses within three hours.
Twelve hours after the first shot was fired, the battlefield was drenched in gore. Each side claimed their dead or wounded. In total, 3,650 men died, with another 16,000 wounded or missing. The slaughter was so devastating that McClellan allowed Lee to retreat the next day without defeating his army once and for all.
Despite preventing the Confederacy from claiming a victory on northern soil, McClellan was removed from his post on Nov. 5 — as President Lincoln was furious that the general hadn’t eradicated the southern threat for good. The Civil War would rage for three more years.
