The illustrated battle cry of freedom series#
The illustrated battle cry of freedom free#

A staggering 23,100 men were wounded, killed or missing in action during the battle. In fact the most consistent argument McPherson uses is the appalling casualties of the battle.

The illustrated battle cry of freedom free#

The crushing defeat of the South’s forces at Antietam emboldened Lincoln to go ahead and make his declaration, on 1 January 1863, converting the war from one which merely wished to reincorporate the rebel states back into the Union to an all-out attempt to crush the South, to abolish the central element of its economic system, to abolish slavery and completely remould the South on the model of the free market, capitalist North.

The war for freedomĪ year earlier President Lincoln had begun seriously considering declaring that one of the North’s war aims was to liberate the South’s slaves and abolish slavery as an institution, but had decided not to do so so as not to jeopardise the uneasy allies in the Northern Camp such as some factions in the so-called borderline states (for example Missouri and Kentucky) and the entire Democrat Party (Lincoln and the American government when the war broke out, were Republican). Despite two and a half more years of war and many more victories on their own soil, they would never again come so close to striking one decisive blow. The South’s defeat at Antietam not only weakened them militarily, but also psychologically. Lee’s army of Northern Virginia lost about a quarter of its number and he decided to abandon the attempt to take the capital and withdrew back into Virginia. Seizing the opponent’s capital city would have been the most dramatic proof possible that the Confederacy was indeed a nation in its own right. The French followed Britain’s lead and Britain hesitated to recognise the South as a separate nation until it proved itself economically viable and secure. Far more importantly, it would have a decisive step toward achieving the South’s primary war aim which was Recognition by the International Community.

In a nutshell it’s because Antietam was the closest the South came to taking Washington DC, an event which would have not just demoralised the North and possibly fatally weakened its army. Why Antietam? Closest the South ever came to victory In his introduction McPherson says that, as you might expect, there were numerous important moments in the American Civil War, before going on to explain why he thinks the Battle of Antietam on Septemjustifies his focus.

The illustrated battle cry of freedom series#

The 160 pages or so of this tidy little book are like a pendant to ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’, McPherson’s vast 860-page history of the Civil War Era, which I have reviewed at length.Ĭrossroads of Freedom is part of a series called Pivotal Moments in American History.