Nine times as many Americans died in the farmlands near Antietam Creek in the fall of 1862 than died on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, the so-called longest day of World War II. The bloodiest single day of war in the nation’s history came when General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army undertook its first engagement on northern soil. According to the Antietam National Battlefield park service, when the fighting had subsided, more than 23,000 soldiers lay dead or wounded, more than all of the dead or wounded Americans in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, and Spanish-American War combined. Just a week after his army’s victory in the Second Battle of Bull Run, Lee resolved to advance the front into Northern territory. The vast farm fields of western Maryland were ready for harvest, and Lee saw in them an opportunity to nourish his soldiers, replenish his supplies, and turn the residents of the undecided border state to his cause. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, the author is most likely suggesting that