THE CORNFIELD: Antietam's Bloody Turning Point

Fresh view of the battle as a whole, and the cornfield in particular, because of two central facts - Union General George McClellan's linear thinking demanded that the Cornfield must be taken and, because of this, the repeated failure by the generals McClellan charged with fulfilling this task created a self-reinforcing cycle of disaster that doomed the Union's prospects for success -- with 22,000 men becoming casualties as Federal and Confederate forces repeatedly traded control of the Cornfield.