The battle of Antietam was an important battle in American history, because of Lincoln's swift move of declaring the Emancipation Proclamation after the win. This was a decisive move in favor of the Union for the rest of the Civil War.
The battle of Antietam was a turning point in the Civil War because it cut off the Confederate States from foreign help and possible funding for their cause. The Confederate states already lacked supplies, money, and men for their cause. This was due to the fact that their economy was based on cotton and other agriculture, and never really industrialized. They had only 1 million men compared to the Union's 3.5 million, due to the Union's industrialization and the fact they did not have slaves (so many immigrants went to the North so they did not have to compete with slave labor). By Abraham Lincoln making the war about slavery, he thwarted any Confederate plans to get help from Britain and France, for they could not support a slavocracy since they had earlier emancipated their slaves in places such as the Caribbean. On top of that, Britain and France started to find different places to buy cotton from. This only hurt the Confederate Army's funding, and supplies more. Freed slaves in the rebel states were also able to join the Union army, strengthening the manpower of the Union. An example of this was Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts regiment, made up of freedmen, which ended up being a win for the Union.
While the Emancipation Proclamation was mainly a war tactic and political move against the Confederacy, it did two things. While its main purpose was to make the war about slavery to stop Confederates from getting foreign help, it also sparked revolutionary feelings in slaves. While the Emancipation Proclamation did not truly free all slaves unless in rebel states, it was seen as a step in the right direction and was felt everywhere, by all slaves. Without the Emancipation Proclamation, I think that the Gettysburg Address would have been less effective, for the Emancipation Proclamation helped build up the sentiment of a "new birth of freedom" and rights of American citizens during the war.
Sources:
http://militarybattle.org/battle-of-antietam
https://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm%3Fid%3D251
http://historycooperative.org/effects-emancipation-proclamation/
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/fort-wagner
Tanshi, I think you gave a brief summary of the influence of the Emancipation Proclamation. It really was a crucial outcome, in fact, in Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, he argues that America cannot unite because they are split over the issue of slavery. Lincoln took it in his own side to use the Northern abolitionist view to unite the country as he intended to do. On aspect that I question is was the proclamation as effective as it was suppose to be? We now that Lincoln didn't not believe that whites and blacks were equal but did this effect his "plan" to lead to the segregation of whites and blacks? Things like the Black Codes or the Freedman's Bureau were arguably disastrous and I wonder if this stems from the lack of severity int he proclamation.
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