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Each episode of Civil War Combat: America's Bloodiest Battles focuses on a single engagement from America's bloodiest war. To bring the human side of the drama to life, each episode, while offering larger strategic commentary, focuses sharply on a single unit that engaged in fighting. Through careful re-enactments viewers are given a sense of what it was like on the ground for those who fought and died in some of America's most brutal battles. This episode of the series concentrates on the fighting at Antietam, one of many missed opportunities by Union commanders to bring the war to a hasty conclusion. The savage fighting between the Union's Irish Brigade and the Alabama regiment, as they challenged for control of the road forever after known as Bloody Lane, offers viewers a window into this brutal moment of history.