what where the turning point of the civil war?

Answer 1

~May 18 to July 5, 1863, and most particularly July 3 and 4. Grant began the siege of Vicksburg on May 18 and the city fell on July 4. Gettysburg was contested on July 1-3, with minor skirmishing on July 4 and Lee's withdrawal on July 5.

Had George Meade followed orders, and the the pleas, of his Commander-in-Chief, Abe Lincoln, he would have trapped Lee's defeated, depleted and exhausted Army of Northern Virginia on the banks of the Potomac. The river was flooded and Lee couldn't cross. Unlike Dunkirk, there was no flotilla of fishing boats to spirit him away. He had no escape. Not only was Gettysburg the turning point in the East, it could have been and should have been the end of the war in Virginia.

Lincoln and the Federal forces won three major battles that Independence Day. Gettysburg and Vicksburg were important, but Lincoln's greatest victory is that he, at long last, had found the Commander he had been looking for. Prior to that July, the Army of the Potomac had been led by incompetent, overcautious, insubordinate generals who were unwilling to fight. It took eight months, but in March, 1864, Lincoln named US Grant, the victor at Gettysburg, his General-in-Chief of the Army of the Republic. Never again would Lincoln have to worry about his army's unwillingness to fight or to pursue an advantage. Grant directed three campaigns against the Army of North Virginia in a war of attrition. He was the first Federal general who actually wanted to end the war by winning it. He was relentless. He lost battles along the way, but when he lost, he got right back into the fight. Win, lose or draw, everytime his army met Lee's, Lee left the field with less of and army. All three of Grants campaigns, The Wilderness (or Overland), the Richmond-Petersburg and the Appomattox, were resounding successes and he beat Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia into submission. Meade was still the general in command of the Army of the Potomac, but now he was under orders from Grant. Grant's orders were simple: "Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." Grant made sure Meade followed those orders. Lee ran out of men, food, supplies and places to hide. 13 months after Grant took the reins of the army in his teeth, less than a year after he crossed the Rapidan and entered Virginia, the war was over.

Meanwhile, Lincoln did not lose much by pulling Grant out of the Western theater. William T. Sherman took over command in the west. Grant's orders to him? "Attack. Attack. Attack" Sherman did and he pushed the western front from the banks of the Mississippi to the Georgia beaches, then north through the Carolinas. Sherman's scorched earth policy on his March to the Sea insured that the ground he conquered would not rise up against him when he left it behind.

Vicksburg is significant because it cut the Confederacy in half and interrupted supply lines and troop movements beyond repair. Vicksburg was as critical to the Confederacy as West point had been to the colonies in the War for National Independence. Gettysburg was vital because it proved the Army of Virginia could not win an offensive war. The carnage in Pennsylvania depleted Lee's army to untenable levels and he could not replace the troops or the generals and command officers he lost there. The defeat also ended any hope that the CSA had of making an alliance with Great Britain. Without GB in the southern camp, no other European nation could safely ally with the South for fear of a move against them by the British. Gettysburg insured that the Confederacy would get no outside help. Add Grant to the equation as General-in-Chief, tack on Sherman as commander in the west and the end was an inevitable, unstoppable march of fate.

It took two more years to lay down the arms, but the end of the war was written in July, 1863.

An earlier turning point was in December, 1860, when South Carolina passed its Ordinance of Secession, and then in April, 1861 when South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter. With all the blustering that had gone on for decades, neither North nor South truly believed that there would be a war. The Confederate states did not think the Republic would actually prosecute a war to force those states who had, by democratic process, left the union to rejoin. The is no constitutional prohibition against secession, and the New England states had threatened to secede in the first decade of the century. On July 21, 1861, at First Manassas, everyone knew how serious the miscalculations were and how long and bloody the war was going to be.

Answer 2

Which civil war? American?
If it is American then The Battle of Gettysburg and the Fall of Vicksburg were fundamental to the loss of the Confederacy. The Battle of Gettysburg destroyed Confederate morale and the Fall of Vicksburg allowed the Union to capture the entire Mississippi River which crucially split the Confederacy in two, making them an easier enemy to fight.

Answer 3

Civil War turning points:

1861 Confederate victories at Big Bethel, 1st Bull Run, and Ball's Bluff (all in Virginia). Impact: The war would be no quick and easy affair.

Union victories in Tennessee early 1862: Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Island #10, cleared Tennessee of Confederate armies and led to the capture of Nashville without a fight, the first Confederate capitol to fall. Nashville was never retaken.

Fall of New Orleans, April 1862. Second CS capitol to fall, major strategic and economic loss to Confederates.

June 1862 Lee replaces Joe Johnston in command of main CS army in Virginia. Another war prolonging event.

Jul 1862: Transfer of Confederate armies from central Mississippi to eastern Tennessee. This bold logistical move reshaped the western theater and brought CS armies back into Tennessee at Chatanooga, from whence they move north back into Kentucky. It took another 18 months before the Confederates were expelled from Chatanoooga again.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared in Sep 1862 and enacted 1 Jan 1863----although opposed by many, in retrospect gave a new meaning to the war, elevated the carnage above a series of horribly bloody battles and effectively ended Confederate hopes of British and French intervention for peace on the basis of separation.

Pair of victories at Gettysburg Jul 1-3, and Vicksburg July 4 1863. Large CS army captured at the twin bastions of Vicksburg, Mississippi and Port Hudson, Louisiana (surrendered 7 July) reopened the Mississippi river and split the Confederacy into two, unequal halves. At Gettysburg a string of Confederate victories in the East---along with Lee's second invasion of the North was ended after the bloodiest battle on American soil.

1864 Sherman's Atlanta campaign and subsequent March to the Sea culminating in the capture of Svannah further subdivided the Confederacy and led to the most important turning point in the war---the reelection of President Lincoln.

Lincoln was opposed by the Democratic party candidate George B. McClellan who although a War Democrat (of sorts) was running on the party platform of bringing an end to the war by negotiation---peace with a view toward separation.

Grant's 1864 Overland campaign, Sheridan's 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign, fall of Savannah and Fort Fisher, and Sherman's carolinas Campaign all hastened the end.

If one event was key it was Lincoln's reelection---which depended on some military success, notably Sherman's, Sheridan's and to a lesser extent, Grant's, although he directed Sherman and Sheridan.

Answer 4

gettysburg, turned back the last chance had to invade the north and capture washington, after that it was just a matter of time before the north advantage in men, material, and manufacturing won the war

Answer 5

Gettysburg