%440. Lee's Raid into Maryland; Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg.%--While the Army of the Potomac was at Harrisons Landing, a new force called the Army of Virginia was organized, and General John Pope placed in command. At the same time General Halleck was recalled from the West and made general in chief of the Union armies. Pope intended to move straight against Richmond. But when McClellan in obedience to orders left Harrisons Landing and took his army by water to the Potomac, near Washington, the Confederate army was left free to act as it pleased. Seeing his opportunity, Lee moved at once against Pope's army, whose line stretched along the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers to the Shenandoah valley in western Virginia. Near the Rapidan at Cedar Mountain was General Banks. He was first attacked and beaten; after which Lee fell upon Pope on the old field of Bull Run, and put the army to flight. Pope fell back to Washington, where his forces were united with those of McClellan. Pushing northward, Lee next crossed the Potomac and entered Maryland. But he was overtaken by McClellan at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, where, September 17, 1862, a great battle was fought, after which Lee went back to Virginia. McClellan was now removed and the command of the army given to General Burnside. He was as reckless as McClellan was cautious, and on December 13 threw his army against the Confederates posted at Fredericksburg Heights and was beaten with dreadful slaughter. Thus at the end of 1862 Richmond was not captured, and the two armies went into winter quarters with the Rappahannock River between them. %441. Emancipation of the Slaves%.--More than two years had now passed since South Carolina had seceded, and during this time a great change had taken place in the feeling of the North towards slavery. When Lincoln was inaugurated, very few people wanted the slaves emancipated. But two years of bloody fighting had convinced the North that the Union could not exist part slave, part free. As Lincoln said in his speech at Springfield in 1858, "It must be all one thing, or all the other." Seeing that the people now felt as he did, Lincoln, in 1862 (March 6), asked Congress to agree to buy the slaves of the loyal slave states, and urged the members of Congress from those states to advise their constituents to set free their slaves and receive $300 apiece for them. This they would not do; whereupon he decided to act upon his own authority, and declared all slaves within the lines of the Confederacy to be freemen.