| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam. By James M. McPherson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xvi, 203 pp. $26.00, ISBN 0-19-513521-0.)

For fifty years or more, Civil War studies have echoed the theme that the battle of Antietam, fought in western Maryland on September 17, 1862, was the most critical turning point of the conflict. Unlike the battles of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and other major engagements, this, the bloodiest single day of the war, had political, diplomatic, and social, as well as military, significance. Antietam not only ended Robert E. Lee's initial incursion into the North, it also furnished Abraham Lincoln with the political capital to publish a document that would add a revolutionary dimension to the conflict. Four days after Lee's retreat to Virginia, the president issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves residing in states then in rebellion against the federal government were "thence forward, and forever free."

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