The Bloodiest Day at War

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On September 17, 1862 in Antietam, Maryland, the bloodiest day of the war occurred. There were about 22,000 casualties from that one day. Neither the North nor South necessarily won because no land was acquired by the South. The Union should've won easily because their troops outnumbered the Confederates 2 to 1 and the general, George McClellan, had a copy of the South's battle plans. This battle gave Abraham Lincoln the perfect time to finally issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all slaves living only in the rebel states were free. The Emancipation Proclamation helped the North because now they had even more people willing to be fight with them and there was a "moral" reasoning behind all the fighting. This one-day battle at Antietam really showed how bloody this war was going to be. Thanks to Alexander Gardner, citizens were also being able to see the effects of the war through some of the many photographs he was able to take at the battle scenes; this was helpful even though they were only pictures which were usually black and white. Nowadays, we can see battle pictures on the television and internet in color and sometimes in motion.