Crossroads of Freedom: AntietamOxford University Press, 2002 M09 12 - 224 páginas The Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 6,000 soldiers killed--four times the number lost on D-Day, and twice the number killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks. In Crossroads of Freedom, America's most eminent Civil War historian, James M. McPherson, paints a masterful account of this pivotal battle, the events that led up to it, and its aftermath. As McPherson shows, by September 1862 the survival of the United States was in doubt. The Union had suffered a string of defeats, and Robert E. Lee's army was in Maryland, poised to threaten Washington. The British government was openly talking of recognizing the Confederacy and brokering a peace between North and South. Northern armies and voters were demoralized. And Lincoln had shelved his proposed edict of emancipation months before, waiting for a victory that had not come--that some thought would never come. Both Confederate and Union troops knew the war was at a crossroads, that they were marching toward a decisive battle. It came along the ridges and in the woods and cornfields between Antietam Creek and the Potomac River. Valor, misjudgment, and astonishing coincidence all played a role in the outcome. McPherson vividly describes a day of savage fighting in locales that became forever famous--The Cornfield, the Dunkard Church, the West Woods, and Bloody Lane. Lee's battered army escaped to fight another day, but Antietam was a critical victory for the Union. It restored morale in the North and kept Lincoln's party in control of Congress. It crushed Confederate hopes of British intervention. And it freed Lincoln to deliver the Emancipation Proclamation, which instantly changed the character of the war. McPherson brilliantly weaves these strands of diplomatic, political, and military history into a compact, swift-moving narrative that shows why America's bloodiest day is, indeed, a turning point in our history. |
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Página xv
... Union nor Confederacy at first included the emancipation of four million slaves in its definition of the freedoms for which each side fought. Indeed, the Confederate states had seceded from the Union to escape the perceived threat posed ...
... Union nor Confederacy at first included the emancipation of four million slaves in its definition of the freedoms for which each side fought. Indeed, the Confederate states had seceded from the Union to escape the perceived threat posed ...
Página xvi
... Union as it was”—a Union with slavery. But Southern counteroffensives in the summer of 1862 reversed the momentum of war and by September of that year brought the Confederacy to the brink of military victory and of diplomatic ...
... Union as it was”—a Union with slavery. But Southern counteroffensives in the summer of 1862 reversed the momentum of war and by September of that year brought the Confederacy to the brink of military victory and of diplomatic ...
Página 3
... Union and Confederate soldiers killed and mortally wounded near the Maryland village of Sharpsburg on September 17 ... Union Army of the Potomac. “I was on the battlefield yesterday where we were engaged,” wrote a Union artillery officer ...
... Union and Confederate soldiers killed and mortally wounded near the Maryland village of Sharpsburg on September 17 ... Union Army of the Potomac. “I was on the battlefield yesterday where we were engaged,” wrote a Union artillery officer ...
Página 4
... Union lieutenant in charge of a burial party where his regiment (57th New York) fought described the dead “in every state of mutilation, sans arms, sans legs, heads, and intestines, and in greater number than on any field we have seen ...
... Union lieutenant in charge of a burial party where his regiment (57th New York) fought described the dead “in every state of mutilation, sans arms, sans legs, heads, and intestines, and in greater number than on any field we have seen ...
Página 6
... Union and Confederate soldiers after the war found that for an extraordinary number of them, no matter how many other battles they had fought, Antietam stood out as the worst.8 Stark memories of Antietam haunted many for the rest of ...
... Union and Confederate soldiers after the war found that for an extraordinary number of them, no matter how many other battles they had fought, Antietam stood out as the worst.8 Stark memories of Antietam haunted many for the rest of ...
Contenido
3 | |
11 | |
JuneJuly 1862 | 41 |
3 The Federals Got a Very Complete Smashing AugustSeptember 1862 | 73 |
4 Showdown at Sharpsburg | 97 |
5 The Beginning of the End | 133 |
NOTES | 157 |
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY | 185 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 191 |
INDEX | 193 |
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