Photo of the Day

No. 522

to lose the last best hope of earth

Contemporaneous drawing of the Civil War Battle of Anietam, September 17, 1862, which remains the costliest single-day battle in US history.

The Civil War would be long and it would cost more in lives than anyone could have imagined when it began in Charleston Harbor in April 1861.

By late 1862, that much was clear.