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Landscape Turned Red by Stephen W. Sears6/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() (Some of the source materials that Sears describes have not been used before.) As McClellan prepares cautiously to engage Lee, the British, averse to backing a loser, are waiting to see which way the war will go, while in Lincoln's desk ""is the paper declaring emancipation for the slaves, still requiring a victory in battle to work its revolutionary effect."" At Antietam, McClellan's army will win despite him-and with that double lesson, Lincoln can safely let him go. ![]() And such shrewd insights abound here-as Sears, from his long experience as an American Heritage editor, puts the Union victory at Antietam Creek, on September 17, 1862, at the center of the Civil War (politically as well as militarily) and also expands his chronicle internally, through character-portrayal, quotation, documentation. Still, he temporized: as author Sears remarks laconically, ""a messiah could not afford to be a gambler"" furthermore, a northern Democrat, like McClellan, might also have different priorities than a Republican administration, pressured by radical abolitionists. But McClellan, as usual, was dithering-when there was delivered to him the celebrated Lost Order (found, propitiously, in a meadow) spelling out current Rebel plans in detail and in toto. In September 1862-after a year and a half of war-Richmond was safe, Washington was threatened, Lee was advancing through Maryland. ![]()
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