Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Battle Of Antietam

Did you know that most major Battles of the Civil War were draws? Although the Battle of Antietam was considered a draw, it still gave the Union army a large advantage. Along with the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Gettysburg was almost a draw, but the Union took the win. Later in the war, a General named Tecumseh Sherman thought that by destroying the southern infrastructure, he would revoke the south of its morale, and its ability to fight. A major theme of the Civil War was war was terrible, as supported by Battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, and General Sherman’s Total War. Firstly, the Battle of Antietam was a gory Battle. The Battle of Antietam started because the south needed shoes, and some southern scouts found that the city of Antietam

The Battle technically lasted 3 days, September 16-18 1862, although, the main fighting was only on the 17th. George McClellan was the Union General of the troops in that Battle, and Robert. E. Lee was the confederate General. Lee was at a disadvantage because his army was half the size of McClellan’s army. Both sides suffered about 10,000 casualties and the Battle was generally considered a tie, it was thought that the Union army could have shattered Lee’s army if they had pursued him back south. I can relate the battle of Antietam to the Battle of Shangguao, part of the Second Sino-Japanese war. In this battle, both sides collided over a position, the Japanese army campaigned against the headquarters of the Chinese 19th army. Both sides fought blood-filled battles against each other while enduring heavy casualties. The Japanese, after a few days of continuous fighting, sent in everything they had against the Chinese and the battle finally ended

What led to this battle, was General Robert. E. Lee, was leading his army to Pennsylvania, to try to gain a food advantage over the North. Unbeknownst to both sides, this would be the first battle in the North. Lee had hoped that with a northern victory, external countries would view the south as an organized country, and not a group of “rag tag bandits”, as some northerner’s called the south. He also hoped that a northern victory would finally make the Union allow the South to become its own country. The Battle was fought on July 1-3, 1863 near and in the small Pennsylvanian town of Gettysburg. This Battle involved the most amount of casualties in the entire Civil War. The Union had both Generals George G. Meade and John F. Reynolds while the south only had Robert E. Lee as their commanding general. Small groups of both of the armies found each other at Gettysburg on July 1st. When news made it back to General Lee, in just a matter of hours, Lee moved a large sum of his troops to attack the Union head on. Originally, the northern area of the town was guarded rather successfully by John Buford and his men, soon to be reinforced with two more corps of Union soldiers. He may have been able to defend that position for a much longer time than he did if it weren’t for the two extremely large Confederate groups that assaulted Buford from the northwest, which had then