The armies remained in position facing each other through the following day, but by the late afternoon of 18 September Lee was making preparations to withdraw the Army of Northern Virginia back to Virginia. Leeâ??s army completed the crossing of the Potomac River near Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on 19 September. A. P. Hillâ??s division was employed again at Botelerâ??s Ford near Shepherdstown on the morning of 20 September to secure the retreat of Leeâ??s reserve artillery. There was no really effective pursuit of Lee by the Army of the Potomac. The Maryland Campaign was over.
The battle of Antietam, Maryland, is correctly referred to as the single bloodiest day of the American Civil War. There were more casualties on 17 September 1862 than any recorded on any other field on any other day during the conflict. The Civil War statistician Thomas L. Livermore states that the Army of the Potomac suffered 2,108 dead, 9,549 wounded, 753 missing, for a total of 12,410 casualties. Livermore puts Confederate loses at 2,700 dead, 9,024 wounded, 2,000 missing, for a total of 13,724 casualties. This represents 26,134 casualties in a single day, more casualties than that suffered by the United States during the entire war with Mexico between 1846 and 1847. The United States Army had 1,721 combat deaths in Mexico, suffered 4,102 wounded, and sustained another 11,155 deaths from disease. There were 16,978 casualties in the entire conflict with Mexico, and at Buena Vista, perhaps one of the most severe battles of the Mexican War, the Americans had 665 total casualties. The contrast between the Mexican War experience and the single day of Antietam was a very sobering one for the participants. To the casualty totals of Antietam one could add 1,813 Federals and 2,685 Confederates who fell at South Mountain, and 533 Federal and an undetermined number of Confederate casualties for the action at Cramptonâ??s Gap. The totals climb to 14,756 Federals and more than 16,409 Confederates, for a grand total in excess of 31,165 casualties for the Maryland Campaign. This was considered quite shocking, a general feeling reinforced by the circulation in civilian urban areas for the first time of photographs made on the battlefield of recent corpses. The horror of the war was brought home to many individuals, both civilian and military, by Antietam.
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