Posted on 09/17/2012 4:22:21 AM PDT by iowamark
The partial victory at Antietam, however, gave Lincoln what he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation that would free the slaves in the Confederate states the following January.
After Antietam, the war would no longer be just about preserving the Union.
General McClellan might have won the war then if he had pursued Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan, however, wanted a compromise peace preserving slavery. He was horrified a few days later at Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
The US playing craps with its very existence as a sovereign national entity, risking its future and the lives of everyone here... to end slavery....after the Revolution to throw off the Monarchy, that is THE defining fact of the United States of America!!
If you don't comprehend THIS about America, you don't know America.... whether or not you live here, you MUST know this!
Example: I am sure I could not claim to in the least bit understand Russia or Russians if I was not aware of their Revolution!
Yet somehow Mr. Dylan and his friends think that the us IS slavery....NOT
No one thinks of serfdom when they think of Russia... they think of the bloody and monstrous revolution the Russians made (and all the subsequent suffering and destruction they've endured since) in order to remove the Czarist system. We credit them with THAT.
Why not have the decency to credit the US with the tremendous effort, sacrifice and near suicidal risk which Americans took to accomplish just such a noble task?
,,,,,, a real bad day for Burnside . A creek you could wade accross and a sunken road all elements of a failed day for Americans on both sides . The bloodiest day in American history and most school children don’t even know about it thanks to our liberal public schools . History is bound to repeat itself .
Antietam .... souls still wander there. Every time I’ve visited, the place really “gets” to me in a way I can’t describe.
NPS Antietam National Battlefield on Facebook
Here's Farmer's Miller's cornfield this morning...
High banks that were difficult to climb as well.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a major movie made about Antietam.
“The US playing craps with its very existence as a sovereign national entity, risking its future and the lives of everyone here... to end slavery.”
False statement. The US/Lincoln may have been playing craps to save the union, but they did NOT engage in war to free the slaves. If they had, Lincoln would have issued an emancipation proclamation on the first day of Sumter...and he would NOT have said:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
CREDIT: Gardner, Alexander, photographer. Antietam, Maryland. Battlefield on the day of battle, 1862. Prints
and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Reproduction Number LC-DIG-cwpb-01162.
I get that.
But I don’t think that any southern states would have left the Union if they were not challenged over keeping slaves.
That’s what I mean.
I would agree with you.
I spent some time all alone in the Dunker Church, which is about one third original materials from that day.
It changed hands many times during the battle, and was used by both sides as a field hospital.
The suffering and agony that occurred in there must have been monumental.it was eerie to be alone in there, but it was not due to a feeling of malice; rather it was more due to extreme sadnesses adding the place.
Unlike
Gettysburg, Antietam is not expansive—it is a rather compact battleground.
To have two large armies firing almost point blank at each other for an entire day in such a small area is almost incomprehensible.
The bravery of the men who fought that day is unequalled.
“But I dont think that any southern states would have left the Union if they were not challenged over keeping slaves.”
When were they challenged? BY whom and under what force?
States declared for the South because the Union was NOT already polarized by Abolishionist rhetoric?
I was there all day Saturday. Very moving and very well-done on everyone’s part.
Never forget.
That one I accept. It’s a pet peeve of mine. Our wonderful public education system no long teaches facts and too many people are ignorant of the facts. Most people actually believe that Lincoln and the remaining Union declared war on the Confederacy with a declared goal to free slaves. Simply not true. It kills them to find out that their whole view of war is false.
As you correctly allude, people can argue that slavery was the cause of the war, but they can’t say that the war started with the intent of freeing slaves. Two totally different concepts. I mean, who are they going to believe, their public school teachers or Lincoln’s own words.
It was part of the equation right from the beginning... the fact that Lincoln articulated it later, differently or possibly for different reasons that people in the South, is not the issue, historically.
The South was an agrarian economy and they were only successful and prosperous at it because they held slaves.... their way of life and consequently their politics as well was tied to slavery.
For THEM, it was a central issue right up front and only became so for everyone else, later.
That’s the way I always understood it.
I’m proud to report my one and only son fought for the Rebs this past Sat at - ahem - Sharpsburg...
He was a Reb on the Bloody Lane site and said that when the Yanks assaulted, he got shivers just getting a feel for what it must have been like.
His grandfather and great grandfather are named after Gen Wade Hampton....
We are blessed with a great heritage.
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