"Of the Battle of Antietam, which constitutes the 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 th...