THE CORNFIELD: Antietam's Bloody Turning Point

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Examines the battle of Antietam as a whole and the cornfield in particular with the idea that Union General George McClellan's linear thinking demanded that the cornfield must be taken and, because of this, the repeated failure by the generals McClellan charged with fulfilling this task created a self-reinforcing cycle of disaster that doomed the Union's prospects for success -- with 22,000 men becoming casualties as Federal and Confederate forces repeatedly traded control of the cornfield.