The bloodiest day in American History was the Battle of Antietam, near a small town in Maryland, Sharpsburg, on September 17, 1862. It was a horrific, stinking battle, highlighted by lunacy and incompetence on the Union side. It was like one of those World War I battles, in which all the fine young men , the best and the brightest, were force fed into the meat grinder of war, coming out on the other side, carnage. It was a battle in which the Gods intervened, allowing the Union a chance to not only win the battle but the war. A chance muffed by the hesitation of the Union Commander, George B. McClellan. It was a battle in which Lee, greatly disadvantaged by this intervention of the Gods, showed his brilliance, and merit. It was the Battle which triggered the Emancipation Proclamation. At the beginning of the Battle, the Union Army, one of the finest armies in history, the Army of The Potomac, under McClellan had 80,000 troops; the Confederate Army, one of the fin...