Even back then you couldn't just be your own country all by yourself. It's kind of like how you can't run a business without relying on other businesses: Like, if you ran a restaurant, you'd have to have one place selling you silverware and another selling you food and another fixing your oven when it breaks down. Even though all these countries were constantly going to war with one another, they still had to live alongside one another and at least try to get along.

 

Or think of it like a big orphanage, with all these kids of all these different backgrounds and temperaments thrown together, and the big ones come out on top and the little ones are all whiny kind of "Please, sir, can I have some more?" In this case, the South was like a skinny kid who'd just been thrown in the door. And of course the first thing they'd want to do is make friends with the big kids.

 

Which is why, in February 1861, Jeff Davis sent these two fellows named Mason and Slidell to England and France, respectively. They got as far as Cuba and boarded a British steamer, the Trent. About that time a union ship, the San Jacinto, got there. It was captained by a guy named Wilkes, who basically was a huge asshat.

 

I mean, he wasn't even supposed to have been there. He was supposed to be in Boston or something. His orders were to go straight home from West Africa, but he kept sailing up and down the coast and harrassing ships both there and in the carribean. When he got word about these Confederates, he fired on the Trent and took the Confederates prisoner. This took big balls, and a whole lot of stupid.

 

Let me reiterate, he fired on a British steamer, in international waters. To a lot of folks, this might not seem like much. To the British, it totally did. They were pissed, and ready for war. They even sent troops to Canada and were ready to kick some serious United States ass.

 

Obviously, the US didn't go to war with England. Lincoln totally caved and England backed off. The point is, when you hear about the Civil War it's all Gettysburg-this and Manassas-that, and battles and generals and crap. But there were always spies and diplomats and politics, too, which I always think is totally cool.

 

Anyway, when the North and South split, it seems to me, the North got all the good politicians, and the South got all the good generals. I don't know why it worked out that way, but the South got General Lee and the North got Abraham Lincoln, among others. In other words, the North knew how to run a country and the South knew how to fight a war.

 

Rednecks fight over anything, anyway, so it's no surprise that they started off the war doing so well. Lee beat the tar out of the Yankees again and again, at Manassas (twice), Fredricksburg, and even a little town called Chancellorsville that could hardly even be called a battle: It was just wave after wave of Yankee troops marching up to a five foot stone wall and being slaughtered by Confederates standing on the other side, picking them off like flies.

 

And it wasn't just that the Confedrate generals were brilliant and daring, but that the Union generals were all boobs. I mean, it wasn't just that Lee was Michael Jordan, but he was Michael Jordan playing HORSE with five retarded fourth graders. They didn't know what to do with him; the South was outgunned and outmanned and yet, time after time, they totally kicked the Yankee's asses.

 

In the North, you had McLellan in command. McLellan was loved by his troops. He was a brilliant motivator and knew how to whip his men into shape. Trouble was, once they were in shape, he never wanted to fight. He would not push forward, he would not be the aggressor, and in short he was just a big wuss. Seriously.

 

 

So, basically, this was the situation in September of 1862. The South was kicking ass, the Northern armies were being mishandled and misled, and everyone was anticipating, for better or worse, intervention by the European powers. Folks like William Gladstone in England were actively calling for England and France to at least offer diplomatic recognition to the South, and incidents like the Trent Affair seemed to help his case.

 

Lincoln was in a bad spot. Now, from very early on he had come out squarely against slavery as an institution; yet, as a politician, he was willing to accomodate slaveholders to preserve the union. That's all he cared about. Even if it meant instituting Negro servtitude all over the Union, he would have done it to preserve the Union. But here he was losing a war that should have been very easy to win, with the threat of England and France and Russia hanging over his head. Up to now, slavery had been an economic issue, and not much more. Except for a few fire-breathing abolistionists, no one really cared.

 

Lincoln was about to change all that.

 

See, Lincoln thought that if slavery became the central issue to the war effort, then England and France would back off. Up to now, it was a war about autonomy and territory. If the North won, there was a very real chance that the South could at least force the concession from them that slavery continue in their region as long as they wanted it to. Nothing was in place to say that after the war, whoever won, things wouldn't just go back to the way they were. There just wasn't any clear line that said, Slavery is wrong and if the North wins, we'll put an end to it. They didn't really even know what they were fighting about.

 

Lincoln couldn't just issue the Emancipation Proclamation while they were losing. For one thing, to the European powers, it would just look like a desperate gesture to gain sympathy and paint their opponents as rat bastards. For another thing, most white folks in the North may have been willing to send their sons and brothers to die to preserve the Union, but not to help some folks that they saw as inferior; in short, he would risk alienating an enormous part of his own constituents.

 

What he wanted to do was to draw the line in the sand that said, here's what we're fighting about. Something that would define their cause and make it impossible for England and France to justify intervention.

 

What he needed was a victory. A big, decisive victory that would show the world that the Union was going to win, and that they had the moral high ground.

 

The South had been fighting a defensive war, just to get the North to leave them alone. Lee had wanted to change that and try to take Washington, but President Davis was against it. For one thing, Washington was defended too heavily against a Southern front; for another, Davis wanted to be all moral about it to show the world that he was not the aggressor. Boo hoo.

 

So Lee borrowed a trick from Bonaparte's book and marched north through Maryland, hoping to circle back around and attack Washington from the north. And in a little town called Sharpsburg, Maryland, while all of Europe watched, McLellan stopped his butt cold.

 

Now, McLellan's forces outnumbered Lee's something like 10 to 1. But, as one observer noted, it may be true that McLellan brought an overwhelming force against Lee that day, but it's also true that he brought himself.

 

If you've read any of my other stuff then you know I'm not all into battles and tactics and stuff, and anyway I think most wars aren't won on battlefields anyway. But this particular battle had a strange twist....

 

Lee was a brilliant strategist and the North had no one who could match him (up to this point, but Grant was still fighting the war out West). Lee would take a vastly inferior force and actually split it along two fronts, he would outflank and outmaneuver the Yanks again and again, and they never seemed to know what he would do next.

 

Except this time, one of Lee's scouts took the orders and wrapped them around some cigars, and, well, dropped them. And they found their way to McLellan. I assume he smoked the cigars, too. Bastard. Anyway the resulting battle was to be the bloodiest in American history, even worse than Gettysburg or Cold Harbor.

 

 

What fascinates me most about Antietam is not what did happen, but what didn't.

 

See, McLellan fought Lee to a standstill, and while the North continued to hold the line, what was left of the Confederate forces fell back to lick their wounds. Lincoln insisted that McLellan push forward and crush them, and if he had, the war might have ended right then. The South would never have recovered. But McLellan once more refused to fight, the South did recover, and the war went on for three more years.

 

Lincoln had his victory, though, such as it was, and he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Now the war really was about slavery, and nobody in Europe or anywhere else was going to step in. All you Northern folk reading this, don't get all high and mighty, either, because the fact is that the Proclamation hurt Lincoln politically; most folks up North weren't willing to fight and die to free the slaves, and a political group called the Copperheads (who opposed the war and favored negotiating a quick peace) gained a lot of clout. In fact, because of this, Lincoln almost lost the election of 1862. He might have, too, but for one thing.

 

The one he ran against was McLellan. And he wasn't real popular after that, either.

 

If those orders hadn't been lost, it's entirely possible that Lee's gambit would have been successful and the South might have broken through. They might have taken Washington and shown the European powers that they weren't going away. England and France, at least, would have intervened, and we'd all be whistling Dixie right now.

 

(Note: The scenario I've just described, about the cigars not being lost and the South winning the war, is exactly the premise of a series of books by Harry Turtledove that goes on to describe the history of North America through World War II)

 

Anyway, I wrote all this off the top of my head and if I've mixed up any of the facts, email me and let me know. But I probably have not mixed up any of the facts, and before you go emailing me any corrections, keep in mind that I am probably much, much smarter than you are.