The Battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862, during the Civil War. The Commander-in-Chief of the Union was George B. McClellan, while Robert E. Lee was Commander-in-Chief of the Confederation. It was the bloodiest one-day battle in American history, with 22,717 dead.
The battle was fought at Sharpsburg and the Antietam Basin, west of the state of Maryland. Although McClellan had plenty of reserve forces that could be used to exploit local successes in the battle, he failed to destroy Lee's army. McClellan had halted Lee's invasion of the state of Maryland, but Lee managed to withdraw his forces to Virginia without interruption from the cautious McClellan. Although the battle was tactically ambiguous, Confederate forces initially withdrew from the battlefield. This made the battle, in military terminology, a Union victory. The victory was significant enough to give President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation. This in turn led to the British and French governments departing from their plans for recognition of the Confederacy.
1. it was narrow pass on the massive persian army's front line got smaller as it pushed through. 2. The Greek soldiers had better weapons and armor and were better at hand to hand combat.
