central axis, as it were, of the present work, and which battle purposely was so greatly minimized and depreciated by political officialdom at the time, President Roosevelt more than forty years afterward, at the dedication of the New Jersey Soldiers Monument on that battle-field September 17, 1903, placed it in its full light and proper perspective in his own vivid and incisive way:
"We meet to-day upon one of the great battlefields of the Civil War. No other battle of the Civil War lasting but one day shows as great a percentage of loss as that which occurred here upon the day on which Antietam was fought. Moreover, in its ultimate effects this battle was of momentous and even decisive importance.
"If the issue of Antietam had been other than it was, it is probable that at least two great European Powers would have recognized the independence of the Confederacy, so that you who fought here forty-one years ago have the profound satisfaction of feeling that you played well your part in one of those great crises big with the fate of all mankind.
"The great American Republic would have become a memory of derision; and the failure of the experiment of self-government by a great people on a great scale would have delighted the heart of every foe of republican institutions."
From: Antietam and the Maryland and Virginia campaigns of 1862; from the government records-union and confederate--mostly unknown and which have now first disclosed the truth
by Isaac W. Heysinger, published in 1912
https://loom.ly/kPCwwQA
Source says not in copyright
Image: Battle of Antietam print via Wikimedia Commons, public domain


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