Antietam

The battle of Antietam, called Sharpsburg by the Confederates, took place on September 17, 1862.  It was at the time, and remains today the bloodiest day in American history.  The casualty list at Antietam reached around 24,000, in one day.  The total number of casualties in all previous American wars was not that high.
The Antietam is a creek that runs through southern Maryland to the Potomac river.  Robert E. Lee had brought his Army north to Maryland in 1862 to move the war away from Virginia, to hopefully gain recruits from that state and to possibly, by winning a battle on Northern soil to gain foreign recognition of the Confederacy.  That dream seemed plausible at the time.
The Army of the Potomac was then commanded by George McClellan, great organizer, terrible combat leader.  Despite gaining Lee's battle plans McClellan, always overly cautious in the face of his daring opponent and over-estimating Lee's numbers, delayed and allowed Lee to re-unite his divided army near the banks of the Antietam.  Lee hoped that his 35, 000 men could win the war in a day by defeating McClellan in Maryland.   McClellan saw ending the invasion of the North as his goal.   What they both got was an incredibly bloody stalemate that produced no tactical winner.
Abraham Lincoln, who understood the larger strategy of the war better than either general, used the retreat of the Rebel army as a victory allowing him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, changing the nature and the strategic goals of the war from a war to re-unite the Union, to a war to abolish slavery.  That is what made Antietam so important, how Lincoln used it.
The Antietam National Battlefield is a very beautiful park today.  The land is little changed from that day in 1862, making it fairly easy to envision what happened there.
On a couple of our trips to Gettysburg we've taken a day to drive to Antietam to tour the park.  Click on the pictures below to see the larger ones with descriptions.
 

There aren't a lot of good books about Antietam, but there is one great one.  It's called; Landscape Turned Red, by Stephen Sears.  Dad's read it three times and even mom liked it.  Check out the Books section for more.