10 Most Important Battles In US History

The deadliest battle in America’s deadliest war was also its most important. On 1 July, Union forces led by General George G. Meade engaged Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lee’s army, fresh off a critical victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia, had pushed into Pennsylvania to take Union territory and legitimize the Confederate States of America to win European support. Meade and his Army of the Potomac were tasked with halting his advance.

Lee and Meade’s army met on the 1 July, engaging in combat while Union forces set up defenses. On the 2, Lee attacked Union forces but failed to achieve victory, and the number of casualties reached 35,000 total. However, on 3 July, Lee ordered Major George Pickett to attack Union forces on Cemetery Ridge with his division of 15,000 men. The men trekked through three fourths of a mile under intense fire, breaking through Union lines. However, casualties were extremely high and the remaining men were in disarray, leading to a full Confederate retreat. Robert E. Lee then pulled out of Gettysburg, and returned to Virginia.

The Battle of Gettysburg was the American Civil War’s turning point. 51,112 men were killed or wounded by the end of the battle. After the Union victory at Gettysburg, Confederate momentum was lost, and further battles were all fought on southern land, with the war largely coming to a close on 9 April 1865 as a result of Robert E. Lee’s formal surrender to US forces led by Ulysses S. Grant.

This was a battle that was moreover limited to a American lasting impact, rather than worldwide. It practically, though not literally, won the American Civil War for the Union by forcing the Confederacy to retreat back into their native lands of the south. They would not touch the Union in their lands again.