Battle of Antietam

Question

What happened on the Sharpsburg Bridge to delay the Union advance on the Confederate army?

Why was Maryland strategically significant to the Union?

Which country did both the North and the South believe would enter the war on side of the South?

Answer 1

The Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam was really three separate battles, fought during three sequential periods during the day. The bridge was on the Union left, and was chronologically the last of the three battles. The conventional answer for the delay at the bridge is miscommunication between commanding General George McClellan and wing commander General Ambrose Burnside. Also, Burnside failed to scout the creek to his left of the bridge, which would have revealed an easy ford across the creek. The result was a delayed frontal attack in plain view of Confederate troops on the high ground above the bridge, and generally pointless slaughter. The long delay allowed Confederate reinforcements to arrive from Harper’s Ferry just as the Union finally fought past the bridge.

Maryland was strategically significant to the Union for several reasons. First, it was a slave state which had failed to join the Confederacy. Lincoln, among others, was at great pains to point out, early in the Civil War, that the North was fighting to preserve the Union, and not to abolish slavery (this position changed as the war went on). Keeping Maryland in the Union was also important because it combined with Virginia to surround Washington DC. If Maryland were to side with the Confederacy, Washington DC would be cut off from the rest of the country. This fear nearly became a reality in April 1861, after Fort Sumter. Lee's invasion of the North (thwarted at Antietam), was intended to embolden Maryland secessionists and perhaps bring the state into the Confederacy.

The North feared England's entry into the war on the side of the South, and the South of course hoped for this to occur. There is great scholarly debate about how close England ever came to intervening, but to the extent it did seriously consider intervention, September 1862 was the closest it came to doing so. At that time Lee was on the march in Maryland, while a second Confederate army had marched into Kentucky (another slave state which failed to join the Confederacy). It is entirely possible that Union defeat at Antietam would have led to England at least attempting to mediate a peaceful settlement leading to two separate countries.