Union troops, in pursuit of a retreating Lee, occupied Virginia in October 1862. That made it harder for local farmers to harvest and also dissipated the fear of Northerners who worried about the invasion. Lincoln seized the moment to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which injected slavery into the war as an offical government position. England and France never seriously considered recognizing the South after Antietam, primarily because they didn't want to get involved in the moral issue of slavery. When Lee left Maryland just 14 days after crossing the Potomac, he lost valuable time he needed for the Confederacy to survive, Frye said.
Time is usually on the side of the underdog.
The North Vietnamese claimed victory after the United States had enough by the early 1970s. One of President Bush's greatest fears last year during Operation Desert Storm was that the war would not end quickly. The Herald-Mail Co.