But all that was just white noise compared to the real significance of the Battle of Antietam, which was political and not military. For two months, Lincoln had been sitting on his draft of an Emancipation Proclamation. He had been waiting for a decisive victory so that issuing the document would not seem an act of desperation. McClellan and Pope had given him nothing but bitter, shattering defeats at Seven Days, Cedar Mountain, and Second Manassas. But now, with Lee’s withdrawal from the field, Lincoln decided that the outcome at Antietam was good enough.
