September 17th is a very important day on the calendar. Which is why nobody wants you to remember it. First off, of course, it is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the day when the Constitution was signed just like July 4th is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is also the anniversary of America's single bloodiest day, September 17th, 1862, when Lee and McClellan met in a battle that finished Lee's first invasion of the North and sent his Army of Northern Virginia back to its home territory. Think of it. The 1860 Census counted 31 million Americans. Yet, from this tiny fraction of our current population, more blood was shed than has ever happened since then. Antietam also resulted in President Lincoln's fulfillment of his private covenant with God. If Lee was defeated and pushed back, Lincoln took this as a sign from the Creator that the slaves should be freed. His Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22nd and the final formal proclamation on January 1st, 1863. Lincoln was actually a very careful man when it came to monkeying around with American liberties. Caught in a Civil War that demanded many extra-constitutional measures, Lincoln still tried to avoid them unless absolutely necessary. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is a fine example of the way in which he approached these matters. Reasoning that he had no constitutional authority to free slaves inside the United States just on his own say-so, he recognized that Congress had given him the power to seize the property of those in rebellion against the authority of the United States. So the Emancipation Proclamation only extended to slaves held in Confederate occupied territory, which he spelled out in detail. Some Confederate states had been partially liberated and these areas were not included. Likewise, Lincoln was fond of giving fair warning of any extra-constitutional measures he intended to employ. The Preliminary Proclamation warned that he WAS GOING TO free slaves held in Confederate territory on January 1st, 1863 if they didn't stop their rebellion. Of course, neo-Confederates will insist that this is all balderdash written to glorify a tyrant. The War of Northern Aggression, as they like to style it. Yet the war began, not with Secession, but with an attack by a foreign nation on the territory of the United States-- in the form of US territory Fort Sumter. This had never been a part of the seceded state of South Carolina. It had been a sand bar turned into an artificial island by US funds and was a sovereign territory just like the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico is today. The Confederates own Secretary of State warned President Davis that it was an illegal act, and it sealed the doom of the young Confederacy. "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Happy Constitution Day to everyone, including especially the descendants of those brave men who fought for it with their lives in 1862. My people were not there at Antietam except in spirit. Instead, they served with the 35th Illinois Infantry. First to the top of Missionary Ridge. One lies buried in a military cemetery in Corinth, Mississippi and another one came home from Andersonville. I wish I was as brave and decent and determined as they were during the nation's previous hour of peril back then, but I can only try.