But more strategically, George B. McClellan's victory was just convincing enough that President Lincoln used it as justification for announcing his Emancipation Proclamation. He had been counseled by his cabinet to keep this action confidential until a Union battlefield victory could be announced, lest it appear to be an act of desperation. Along with its immense effect on American history and race relations, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively prevented the British Empire from recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate government. The British public had strong anti-slavery beliefs and would not have tolerated joining the pro-slavery side of a fight where slavery was now a prominent issue.Rawley, p. 142. This greatly diminished the Confederacy's hopes of surviving a lengthy war against the North's suffocating naval blockade. Support from France was still a possibility, but it never came to pass. Antietam and two other coincident failed actions—Braxton Bragg's invasion of Kentucky (sometimes called the "high-water mark of the Confederacy in the Western Theater"McPherson (p. 858) considers the Union victory at Perryville in combination with that at Antietam to be the second of the war's four major turning points, one in which the possibility of an imminent Southern victory was quashed.) and Earl Van Dorn's advance against Corinth, Mississippi—represented the Confederacy's only attempts at coordinated strategic offensives in multiple theaters of war. Rawley, p. 101.
