only to be driven into retreat by Lee-led rebel forces in the Seven Days' Battle. Seizing the momentum, Lee made a push for Maryland and Pennsylvania that was checked by Union General George B. McClellan in September 1862 (this clash featured a September 17 battle at Antietam Creek in Maryland that proved to be the single bloodiest day of the entire Civil War). That same month, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order which abolished slavery in the Confederacy (but not in slave states such as Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, which had remained in the Union). By late 1862 and early 1863 it was clear that the conflict was going to be a long and bloody one. In December 1862 the Federalist forces of the North lost another big battle, this time at Fredericksburg, Virginia. In early May 1863, Lee guided the rebel army to yet another important victory in Virginia, at Chancellorsville, but he lost his best general, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, to friendly fire in the process. Further west, however, Union troops under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant sliced through the Deep South and assumed control of the Mississippi River in the Vicksburg Campaign. Grant's triumph came in the same month--July 1863--that the Confederate Army suffered a costly and demoralizing loss at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg decimated Lee's forces, and the defeat marked a significant turn in the fortunes of the Confederacy. In March 1864 Lincoln appointed Grant to head all Union troops. The president had been bitterly disappointed with the unassertive performances of Grant's predecessors, but Grant proved an implacable and effective leader. Relying on superior numbers, Grant and his generals systematically pushed their Confederate foes southward, and Lee and Grant engaged their armies at several memorable junctions. But while the Union army finally had the upper hand, Lincoln's job was in jeopardy; Northern voters were w...
