The Bloodiest Day in the Civil War

The bloodiest day of the Civil War happened in the Battle of Antietam, where over 23 thousand people died, imbetween both sides. This battle was named after a creek that separated the two armies. Antietam is also know as the Battle of Sharpsburg, and was fought on Union soil in the only slave state to stay in the Union; Maryland. While marching, the Union army found an abandoned Confederate camp site. While going through, two soldiers found a piece of paper wrapped around three cigarettes. When they unfolded the paper, they found General Lee’s orders to subordinate officers. These orders were then known as the “Lost Orders.” General McClellan led the Union army containing 90,000 soldiers while General Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia that contained 55,000 soldiers. Most of the fighting happened near and on a hill called Dunker Hill. A large barn near this hill was turned into a field hospital for the Union. Within five hours of fighting here, 12,000 soldiers had died. On the field, Confederate General Gordon said this quote, “This portion of the field was lost and recovered until the green corn that grew upon it looked as if it had been struck by a storm of bloody hail.” In this one day over 26,000 people were missing, dead, wounded as a total. The Union said that they won because Lee retreated with his army. Lee thought he would be pursued, but it took him all of September, 18th to realize that he wasn’t having any interference in getting back to the Confederate States. After the battle because McClellan wasn’t fighting in the correct method that President Lincoln wanted, he instated General Burnside as the Head General.

In the battle of Antietam, The union general was general McClellan, during the battle, McClellan made some of the largest mistakes, through indecisiveness, once learning of general lees plan, through the cigars, it took McClellan over 18 hours!, he knew general lees exact plan, yet It took him 18 hours to decide whether to follow him or not. Another major flaw made by McClellan was when he had general lees army on the run, instead of following lees army, and most likely destroying the army, McClellan decided to wait to see if it was a trick rather than follow. Gen. McClellan also, even though he had a larger army, failed to focus the army, so instead of having a large mass of soldiers, he just had many small groups of soldiers

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