Painted by E. Jahn.
Copyright, 1901, by Perrien-Keydel Co., Detroit, Mich., U. S. A.

AT ANTIETAM.
[Larger Image]

ANTIETAM, OR SHARPSBURG

At Sharpsburg (Antietam) was sprung the keystone of the arch upon which the Confederate cause rested.—James Longstreet, Lieutenant-General C. S. A., in “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.”

A battle remarkable in its actualities but more wonderful in its possibilities was that of Antietam, with the preceding capture of Harper’s Ferry and the other interesting events that marked the invasion of Maryland by General Lee. It was one of the bloodiest and the most picturesque conflicts of the Civil War, and while it was not all that the North was demanding and not all that many military critics think it might have been, it enabled President Lincoln to feel that he could with some assurance issue, as he did, his Emancipation Proclamation.

Lee’s army, fifty thousand strong, had crossed the Potomac at Leesburg and had concentrated around Frederick, the scene of the Barbara Frietchie legend, only forty miles from Washington. When it became known that Lee, elated by his victory at Second Bull Run, had taken the daring step of advancing into Maryland, and now threatened the capital of the Republic, McClellan, commanding the Army of the Potomac, pushed his forces forward to encounter the invaders. Harper’s Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, was a valuable defense against invasion through the Valley of Virginia, but once the Confederates had crossed it, a veritable trap. General Halleck ordered it held and General Lee sent “Stonewall” Jackson to take it, by attacking the fortress on the Virginia side.