Date of Award
Summer 8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
War, Diplomacy and Society
First Advisor
Kyle Longley
Second Advisor
Mateo Jarquin
Third Advisor
William Cumiford
Abstract
The Battle of Antietam, often overlooked among the defining events of the American Civil War, perfectly encapsulates the complexities of the conflict and the myriad factors that must be considered to fully understand it. These intertwining factors can be found preceding and following Antietam in more vivid terms than any other event in the Civil War. While the confrontation at Antietam was the culmination of repeated Union failures while campaigning in Virginia, its importance derived from the diplomatic tightrope walked by the Lincoln Administration attempting to ward off Anglo-French intervention in the conflict. Struggling to maintain war support from the Northern public, leadership in the North was reluctant to embrace the abolition of slavery as the Union cause. Abolitionist sentiment was far from universal in the North, and the adoption of emancipation as a war aim threatened to hemorrhage valuable political capital needed to maintain the Union war effort. Yet in the battle over Confederate recognition, an antislavery cause was the one remaining card the Union could play to avoid increasingly probable European intervention. Recognizing this, Lincoln sought a high-profile Union victory that could give him the political capital needed to proclaim the crusade to end slavery in the United States.
Though far from the decisive victory Lincoln sought, Antietam represented a critical turning point in the war as it eliminated any prospect of European intervention. Factoring in the Union’s multitude of advantages in manpower, material, industrial capacity, and infrastructure, free of outside intervention, the North was well positioned to win a war of attrition against the South. While many other events in the Civil War demonstrate the various strands that weave together and comprise the American Civil War, no other moment encapsulates and depicts each of these strands so clearly as at Antietam.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Cuadros, Garrett. "At the Crossroads of Civil War." Master's thesis, Chapman University, 2025. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000701
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