Monday: Antietam and Emancipation

I am distracted on Monday by sad business calls from home, and so watch the group march away to Antietam on 9/17/62 with its loss of 23,000 soldiers (bloodiest day in U.S. battle history), which led the way to the Emancipation Proclamation, whose legal argument I had never before heard.  Because the Constitution permitted slavery, Lincoln would be hard-pressed under it to free slaves. . .except he declared that the South as seceded did not technically come under the Constitution, and he asserted his martial powers.  He announced his order in 1862; it took effect January 1, 1863.  Slaves in the north were freed two years later by the 13^th amendment.