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Added 1545637644 by Mick's Pix Photos.

Looking out over the "Bloody Cornfield" on the American Civil War Antietam Battlefield at Sharpsburg, Maryland.

The Northern Armies had been consistently beaten by the South, but this battle was the first major confrontation that could be counted a s genuine Union Victory.

This gave Abraham Lincoln the opportunity he had been waiting for to issue an "Emancipation Proclamation", freeing all slaves. This was largely a political move; by the time the war broke out, all of the Northern States had already outlawed slavery, and the Confederacy considered itself a separate country, and therefore not subject to the laws of the United States, so the reality is that the Proclamation did not actually free a single slave, which in no way lessens the ultimate importance of the issuance of the Proclamation as an historic event.