150 years since Antietam
September 16, 2012
22,717 killed, wounded, or missing after one day of vicious battle – the bloodiest day in the history of the United States.
Lincoln at Antietam.
“Bloody Lane”
Casualties near the church of the pacifist Dunker sect (Sharpsburg, Maryland)
First page of Emancipation Proclamation. According to Richard Sltokin’s Long Road to Antietam, the Union victory at Antietam created the political climate that allowed Lincoln to issue the Proclamation.
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BLT 
Lincoln had drawn up the Emancipation Proclamation months before the battle of Antietam, but it waited in a desk drawer for a victory that could legitimize the edict in the eyes of the president’s opponents. As Lincoln put it, “I don’t want to issue a document the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet!”
http://www.salon.com/2002/09/17/mcpherson/