history question??

Question

what was the turning point of the Civil War.....Antietam or Gettysburg?? and why?? what are some reasons??

please help me i am stuck and not too good in history

<333

Answer 1

While not a clear victory for either side, Antietam (Sharpsburg) stopped Lee's invasion of the North. More importantly, McClellan's "victory" gives Lincoln the strength to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. This act does not free any slaves as a practical matter but it does clearly make the war about slavery. This in turn makes it politically impossible for England and France, where slavery is illegal, to support the Confederacy. Without European support the Confederacy could not hope to combat the industrial might of the North. This was the beginning of the end for the South.

Answer 2

I have been highly interested in this question for quite some time now. Many historians take the view that Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War. Their main argument, as I see it, revolves around the fact that the Confederate loss at Gettysburg stopped Lee from taking Washington DC, like he had planned.

I take the opposite view- that Gettysburg was just another battle. Meaning that Lee could have chosen to invade another time in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for Lee, the same day (or day after) he lost at Gettysburg, he lost at another vital battle in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Vicksburg was a fortress on the Mississippi River.

So, with those two losses, coupled with the drastic drop in morale in the Confederate army, it makes sense that the turning point of the war was at this time, not strictly because of Gettysburg.

Always remember to footnote sources.

Answer 3

During the American Civil War, the Confederate Army and the Union Army fought outside a small town called Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg was largest battle in the Western hemisphere. Here, more men died than any other place in North America. Gettysburg was the turning point of the war. The casualties were so great that never again did the Confederate Army possess the moral and physical strength to invade the Union."

"There is widespread disagreement over the turning point of the American Civil War. While the Battle of Gettysburg (often cited in combination with Battle of Vicksburg) is the most widely cited, there are several arguable turning points in the American Civil War. Some possibilities are presented here in date sequence. Only the positive arguments for each are given.
On July 4, 1863, the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. The previous day, Maj. Gen. George Meade decisively defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. These twin events are the most often cited as the turning points of the war.
Vicksburg split the Confederacy, denying its control of the Mississippi River and preventing supplies from Texas and Arkansas that could sustain the war effort from passing east. As President Abraham Lincoln had stated, "See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.... We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg." And the 30,000 soldiers who surrendered with the city were a significant loss to the cause.
Gettysburg was the first major defeat suffered by Lee. It repelled his second invasion of the North and inflicted serious casualties on the Army of Northern Virginia. In fact, the National Park Service marks the point at which Pickett's Charge collapsed—the Copse of Trees on Cemetery Ridge—as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. From this point onward, Lee attempted no more strategic offensives. Although two more years of fighting and a new, aggressive general (Grant) were required, the Army of the Potomac had the initiative and the eventual end at Appomattox Court House seems inevitable in hindsight.
Gettysburg was seen by military and civilian observers as a great battle, but those in the North had little idea that two more bloody years would be required to finish the war. Southern morale was not strongly affected by the defeat because many assumed that Lee had suffered only a temporary setback and would resume his winning ways against ineffective Union generals."

"The Turning Point: Gettysburg
"That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."


Lone cannons at Gettysburg recall the bloodiest of Civil War battles.


For many people Gettysburg is the Civil War. On the fields outside this small Pennsylvania town in July 1863, the armies of North and South fought the largest battle of the war, one that arguably decided the conflict. The battle pitted Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, flush from a brilliant victory at Chancellorsville, against George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac. Meade, who had been in command of the army for only four days, had 83,000 men; Lee had 75,000. For three bloody days the fortunes of the two armies ebbed and flowed across the battlefield. When it was over, Meade's army had suffered 23,000 casualties; Lee's 28,000. But Meade's army held the field, and Lee's was in retreat. The Confederacy had reached its high-water mark, and the tide had turned. That the day after the battle was the Fourth of July is one more of those vivid ironies that keep the Civil War alive in so many imaginations.

Although surrounded by commercialization (which sometimes encroaches uncomfortably close to the park boundaries), the battlefield remains remarkably evocative, with place names that echo from the history books: Little Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, the Peach Orchard, the Wheat Field. Its 6,000 acres are dotted with more than 1,600 monuments to the people and units who participated in the battle. Taken together they create a vast mosaic of war made up of individual heroics and tragedies. Perhaps nothing makes the battle more tangible than visiting the launching point of Lee's last great gamble—when he sent the 12,000 troops of the so-called Pickett's Charge against the Union center—then traveling to the other side of the battlefield to see where the charge finally faltered and fell back at the "high-water mark."

The problem with your question may well be that there was no "THE turning point", but rather a number of "turning points.

Answer 4

Antietnam has to be recognized as the war's turning point because Lee's invasion of the north was stopped dead there.