[DogByte6RER]

The article concludes with a “what if” alternate history scenario ...

If the lost order hadn’t been lost

It’s easy to see inevitability in events as consequential as the Antietam struggle. But many who’ve studied it, from participants to scholars generations later, dwell on the razor’s edge of chance or fate or providence on which this event teetered.

Interestingly, Lincoln told his cabinet during the unsettled days back in July that he’d made a private vow to read the outcome of the next battle, for or against the North, as an indication of divine will on the question of emancipation. God, he concluded, had ‘decided this question in favor of the slaves.’

Maj. Walter Taylor, an aide to Lee, also perceived a divine hand, but in a different place. He called the lost order a turning point and concluded, ‘It looks as if the good Lord had ordained that we should not succeed.’

Looking back, Lee himself said, ‘Had the Lost Dispatch not been lost, and had McClellan continued his cautious policy for two or three days longer, I would have had all my troops concentrated on the Maryland side, stragglers up, men rested and intended then to attack McClellan, hoping the best results from (the) state of my troops and those of the enemy.

‘Tho’ it is impossible to say that victory would have certainly resulted, it is probable that the loss of the dispatch changed the character of the campaign.’

Today, some who promote the notion of American ‘exceptionalism’ point to times when something unexplainable drops into the nation’s affairs, redirecting events away from the brink.

[jonascord]

As for the "Divine Hand," what are the odds of one particular piece of paper, out of all trash and litter of a used army campsite, would be glanced at by someone who could read?
(Not a common thing, even in the Army of the Potomic.)

However, the idea of a place that is better than anywhere else is horrifying to Democrats. To these children, if everyone can't have it, right now, no one should.

[PeaRidge]

By the time of this horrible battle, the Morrill Tariff had been forgotten; the low Southern tariffs had fallen; the concept of Southern ports open to free trade that would flood the Mississippi with cheaper European goods was gone.

Lincoln, who never acknowledged the reality of secession, arranged that the Constitutional protections against coercion were lost; states’ rights concepts were wiped from the conscious of the citizenry; the guarantees of the Bill of Rights were gone from both Northern and Southern people........

......the only thing left was the war with the strategic goal of the permanent elimination of the mercantile and planter class of the South with the only reason for Union invasion left unresolved....... the Grand Rationalization of slave emancipation.

It would seem that the bigger the lie, the bigger the memorial in the District of Columbia.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Today, some who promote the notion of American ‘exceptionalism’ point to times when something unexplainable drops into the nation’s affairs, redirecting events away from the brink.

I feel like the nation is again at the brink. However, it is only a matter of time until the takers overcome the producers.

[HokieMom]

I spent the day at the battlefield yesterday reflecting on the the enormous sacrifice.