Читать книгу Sharpsburg - Kent Gramm - Страница 6

To the Reader

In the summer of 2015, the Confederate battle flag came down from the South Carolina state capitol; but in the late summer of 1862 it flew higher than it ever had or ever would again. A summer of brilliant campaigns and costly victories had brought the army of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson across the Potomac in an invasion of the North. President Abraham Lincoln promised his God that if slow-moving General McClellan and his Army of the Potomac won a victory, he would issue a proclamation freeing all slaves in the rebellious states. Thus the bloodiest day in American history, the Battle of Antietam, called Sharpsburg by Southerners, became the battle where the war for the Union became a war against slavery.

This is a story of that battle, told by two participants. One fought for the South, the other for the Union. Their ghostly voices still speak for rebellion and equality, and still haunt the American arguments about freedom and race.