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For American soldiers and civilians alike, September 17, 1862, achieved peak levels of suck. In America’s long love affair with violence, the Battle of Antietam stands out as the deadliest day in the nation’s history. It “helps” that it was Americans killing Americans in a civil war. But that’s not the only deadly thing that happened to Americans that day.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 17, 1862--
Traitor Bob Lee, who later had a Dodge Charger named after him in a crappy TV show whose only cultural contribution was Daisy Dukes, took his traitorous Confederate Army of North Virginia fighting for the right to own people with more melanin onto Union soil in Maryland to face off against General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.
I’ll forego a description of the battle and just say they beat the living shit out of each other over a creek called Antietam all day. The Union had twice the troops engaged in battle as the traitors did, but couldn’t achieve “force concentration” so it wasn’t a rout. Here is the murder by numbers: 2,108 Union deaths vs. 1,567 Confederate deaths. 9,549 Union wounded vs. 7,752 Confederate wounded. And considering the shit state of medicine in the 19th century, it’s a fair bet a lot of those wounded died at a later date. Oh, and there were 753 captured/missing Union vs. 1,018 captured/missing on the Confederate side.
By the way, in war where they use things that explode to inflict death, “missing” is often a more pleasant way of saying “Blown to bits.”
Tactically, the battle was a draw, but strategically the Union won because Lee abandoned his invasion of Union territory. President Lincoln was pissed at his general, however, for not pursuing Lee and fucking up those traitorous forces some more, and fired McClellan. Nevertheless, Lincoln considered the fact that they sent Lee packing enough of a victory that the timing was right for him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation five days later.
Side note: Major-General Hooker fought on the Union side in this battle, and the stuff about the slang term for sex worker being named for him is apocryphal.
I almost forgot! The civilian deaths. In a completely unrelated event, but happening on the same day, same year in Pittsburgh, there was an explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal. This was an important supply and manufacturing center for Union forces, and stuff that was intended to explode at a later date exploded when it wasn’t supposed to. Seventy-eight workers, mostly young women, died.
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I've walked some of the battle sites like Antietam and Gettysburg around Maryland and Pennsylvania. What astonished me is how small and close together they are compared to today's sites.
so, you made me look up apocryphal when you could have said 'fake news. '
just sayin'