The bloodiest day in American History was the Battle of Antietam, near a small town in Maryland, Sharpsburg. 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 finest armies in history, the Army of Northern

    The Battle of Gettysburg was the greatest clash of arms on American soil, in American History. On the first day alone, July 1, 1863, Union forces lost 9,000 casualties; the Confederates lost 6,000 casualties, in one day, in the first day of battle. The Union forces were led by Maj. General George Meade, a steady, unimaginative,    and uninspiring general. He commanded one of the most resilient armies in history, the Army of the Potomac. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was commanded by one of the great generals in American arms, the hero of the Mexican-American War, General Robert E. Lee. It was an army fresh from the greatest feat of arms on American soil, the American Cannae, Chancellorsville, in which Lee had subdivided his inferior force into three parts and defeated the vast army of the North. General Lee, flushed with victory, had invaded the North, into Pennsylvania, on his way to Philadelphia or New York City; where there was a large pro-Southern community of Irish