Turning Points: Gettysburg & Vicksburg: Fifth Grade Social Studies
In July 1863, during the hottest week of the summer, the fate of the United States hung in the balance as two monumental Union victories in Pennsylvania and Mississippi marked the decisive turning points of the Civil War.
The Crossroads of Summer 1863
In the late spring of 1863, the Confederacy stood at the peak of its military confidence in the East. In May, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had won a stunning, tactical masterpiece at the Battle of Chancellorsville, defeating a Union army twice its size (though suffering the tragic loss of General Stonewall Jackson, who was accidentally shot by his own men in the twilight).
Lee decided to launch a daring, second invasion of the North, marching seventy-five thousand veteran troops through Maryland and into the fertile farmlands of southern Pennsylvania. Lee held bold strategic objectives:
- Relieve War-Torn Virginia: Move the fighting out of ravaged Virginia farmlands to allow crops to be harvested, while feeding his hungry Confederate army on rich Pennsylvania cattle and grain.
- Threaten Northern Cities: Threaten major Northern cities like Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
- Strengthen the Peace Movement: Panic the Northern public and strengthen Northern "Copperheads" (Peace Democrats), forcing Lincoln's administration to negotiate a peace treaty recognizing Confederate independence.
- Gain European Recognition: Win a decisive, crushing victory on Northern soil that would compel Great Britain and France to officially recognize the Confederacy.
The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863)
Pursuing Lee was the ninety-thousand-man Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George G. Meade, who had been appointed to lead the army just three days before the battle.
Neither general planned to fight at Gettysburg, a quiet market town of twenty-four hundred residents nestled among rolling hills where ten roads converged like spokes on a wagon wheel. On the morning of July 1, 1863, Confederate infantry marching toward town in search of shoes and supplies collided with Union cavalry commanded by General John Buford.
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| THE THREE DAYS OF GETTYSBURG (JULY 1863) |
| |
| DAY 1 (JULY 1): THE COLLISION & RETREAT |
| - Confederate forces push Union troops through Gettysburg. |
| - Union army establishes a formidable, fishhook-shaped |
| defensive line along high ground: CEMETERY RIDGE, |
| CULP'S HILL, and the ROUND TOPS. |
| |
| DAY 2 (JULY 2): ASSAULT ON THE FLANKS |
| - Lee attacks Union left & right flanks (Peach Orchard, |
| Wheatfield, Devil's Den, Culp's Hill). |
| - Heroic defense of LITTLE ROUND TOP: Joshua Lawrence |
| Chamberlain and the 20th Maine save the Union flank! |
| |
| DAY 3 (JULY 3): PICKETT'S CHARGE |
| - Lee orders a massive frontal assault against the center. |
| - 12,500 Confederates march across 1 mile of open fields. |
| - Union artillery and rifles decimate the rebel ranks! |
| - "High Water Mark of the Confederacy" broken; Lee retreats! |
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Day One: The Collision (July 1)
Buford's cavalry held off superior Confederate forces until the Union First Corps, led by General John F. Reynolds (who was killed instantly by a sniper bullet), arrived to reinforce the line. Overwhelmed by Confederate numbers, the Union troops were driven back through the streets of Gettysburg.
However, the Union retreat was a blessing in disguise. Union soldiers rallied on the high ground south of town, anchoring a formidable, three-mile defensive line shaped like an upside-down fishhook: from Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill on the right, down along Cemetery Ridge in the center, to two rocky hills called Little Round Top and Big Round Top on the left.
Day Two: The Flanks and Little Round Top (July 2)
On July 2, Lee launched massive assaults against both ends of the Union line. Savage fighting erupted in places that became forever famous: the Devil's Den (a maze of giant boulders), the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard.
The most critical moment occurred on the extreme southern end of the Union line at Little Round Top. Recognizing that if the Confederates captured this rocky, undefended hill, they could place cannons on top and rake the entire Union line, Union Chief of Engineers Gouverneur K. Warren rushed troops to the crest minutes before Confederate regiments attacked.
Defending the very end of the Union flank was the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a former college professor of rhetoric. For two hours, Chamberlain's men repelled desperate assaults by the 15th Alabama. Out of ammunition and with a third of his regiment fallen, Chamberlain knew that if his line broke, the entire Union Army would be rolled up from behind and defeated.
Chamberlain ordered the unthinkable: "Fix bayonets!" Drawing his sword, Chamberlain led a desperate, screaming downhill bayonet charge into the stunned Confederates. Shocked by the ferocity of the charge, hundreds of Confederates surrendered or fled, saving the Union flank and the battle.
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| THE CLIMAX: PICKETT'S CHARGE (JULY 3, 1863) |
| |
| 1:00 PM: 150 Confederate cannons unleash the loudest artillery|
| bombardment ever heard on the American continent! |
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| v |
| 3:00 PM: 12,500 Confederate infantry step out from the tree |
| line in parade-ground precision under Gen. Pickett. |
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| v |
| THE TRAGIC MILE: Marching across open wheatfields into massed |
| Union canister shot and rifle volleys ("Double canister!"). |
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| THE COPSE OF TREES: Confederate General Lewis Armistead |
| breaches the stone wall with a small band of men ("High Water |
| Mark of the Confederacy"), but is mortally wounded. |
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| DEFEAT: Over 50% of the attacking force killed or wounded! |
| Lee rides out: "It is all my fault; you must help me save |
| what is left of the army." |
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Day Three: Pickett's Charge (July 3)
Believing that Meade had reinforced his flanks and weakened his center, General Lee ordered a massive frontal assault against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, despite the passionate objections of his senior general, James Longstreet, who warned: "No fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position."
At 1:00 PM on July 3, more than one hundred and fifty Confederate cannons opened fire in a colossal artillery duel that shook the earth for fifty miles. At 3:00 PM, twelve thousand five hundred Confederate soldiers stepped out of the woods in three magnificent battle lines, led by General George Pickett.
Marching across nearly a mile of wide, open fields, the Confederates were torn to pieces by Union artillery firing exploding shrapnel and deadly canister shot (tin cans packed with iron balls that turned cannons into giant shotguns). Union infantry behind low stone walls leveled their rifles and poured lethal volleys into the advancing lines.
A small band of Confederates led by General Lewis Armistead briefly breached the low stone wall at the "Copse of Trees"—a spot remembered as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy." But Union reinforcements rushed forward, killing Armistead and wiping out the breakthrough. The charge was an utter catastrophe: over half the attacking force was killed, wounded, or captured.
On July 4, 1863, in a torrential downpour, Lee began his agonizing retreat back to Virginia with a seventeen-mile wagon train of groaning wounded men. Lee's army would never invade the North again.
Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle in American history: over fifty-one thousand American casualties (twenty-eight thousand Confederate and twenty-three thousand Union) in just three days of fighting.
The Fall of Vicksburg: Splitting the Confederacy (July 4, 1863)
While the nation's attention was fixed on Gettysburg, an equally decisive Union triumph took place eight hundred miles to the southwest on the banks of the Mississippi River: the Siege of Vicksburg.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a heavily fortified city perched high atop two-hundred-foot bluffs overlooking a sharp hairpin bend in the Mississippi River. Known as the "Gibraltar of the Confederacy," Vicksburg's artillery batteries completely controlled river traffic. Abraham Lincoln recognized its vital significance: "Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket."
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| THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG (MAY-JULY 1863) |
| |
| GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT'S MASTERFUL CAMPAIGN: |
| - Marches troops down west bank, ferried across river by Navy |
| - Cuts loose from his supply lines, wins 5 battles in 17 days,|
| and traps Confederate General John C. Pemberton inside! |
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| 47-DAY SIEGE: |
| - Union artillery & gunboats shell the city day and night. |
| - Starving residents dig caves into yellow clay hillsides to |
| survive artillery; forced to eat rats, mules, and dogs! |
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| SURRENDER ON JULY 4, 1863: |
| - Pemberton surrenders 29,000 Confederate soldiers! |
| - UNION CONTROLS THE ENTIRE MISSISSIPPI RIVER! |
| - Lincoln: "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the |
| sea." Confederacy split in two! |
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Commanding the Union Army of the Tennessee was General Ulysses S. Grant. In one of the most brilliant military campaigns in history, Grant cut loose from his supply lines, marched his army deep into Mississippi, won five battles in seventeen days, and pinned thirty thousand Confederate defenders under General John C. Pemberton inside Vicksburg's fortifications.
Grant placed Vicksburg under a suffocating forty-seven-day siege. Union artillery batteries on land and ironclad gunboats on the river shelled the city day and night. To escape the exploding shells, citizens and soldiers dug hundreds of caves into the yellow clay hillsides, living underground. With all food supplies cut off, residents were reduced to eating horses, mules, pet dogs, and eventually rats.
Starving and out of ammunition, General Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg on July 4, 1863—the exact day Lee was retreating from Gettysburg.
Five days later, the last Confederate outpost at Port Hudson, Louisiana, surrendered. The Union had achieved the second part of the Anaconda Plan: the complete control of the Mississippi River. The Confederacy was cut in half, severing Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana from the eastern states. Abraham Lincoln proclaimed: "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."
The Gettysburg Address: A New Birth of Freedom
On November 19, 1863, thousands of citizens gathered at Gettysburg to dedicate a national soldiers' cemetery for the thousands of Union dead buried in temporary graves across the battlefield.
The main keynote speaker was Edward Everett of Massachusetts, renowned as the greatest orator in the country. Everett spoke for two full hours, delivering a magnificent, sweeping oration from memory.
Then, President Abraham Lincoln stepped forward to deliver "a few appropriate remarks." Speaking for just two minutes in ten concise, poetic sentences of only 272 words, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address—the most famous speech in American history.
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| THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (1863) |
| |
| "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth |
| on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, |
| and dedicated to the proposition that all men are |
| created equal. |
| |
| Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether |
| that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, |
| can long endure... |
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| ...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not |
| have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have |
| a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, |
| by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the |
| earth." |
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Lincoln redefined the entire meaning of the Civil War. By referencing "four score and seven years ago" (eighty-seven years, pointing back to 1776, not 1787), Lincoln anchored the nation's identity in the Declaration of Independence and its moral proposition that "all men are created equal."
Lincoln stated that the war was a profound global test of whether a democratic society could survive, or whether internal division would destroy self-government. He honored the fallen soldiers who gave "the last full measure of devotion," and summoned the living to ensure that the nation experienced "a new birth of freedom"—a freedom that encompassed all Americans—and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to explain why General Robert E. Lee decided to invade Pennsylvania in June 1863, and analyze how the Battle of Gettysburg permanently altered the military fortunes of the Confederacy. The response should detail Lee's desire to relieve Virginia farmlands, capture Northern supplies, strengthen the Northern peace movement, and win foreign diplomatic recognition, explaining how the catastrophic loss of twenty-eight thousand soldiers at Gettysburg broke the offensive capability of his army and forced the Confederacy into a permanent defensive retreat.
Exercise Two asks students to describe the strategic importance of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and explain how General Ulysses S. Grant's victory on July 4, 1863, fulfilled a key objective of the Union Anaconda Plan. The response should explain that Vicksburg controlled traffic along the Mississippi River, detailing how Grant's forty-seven-day siege captured the fortress city, giving the Union total control of the river and severing Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana from the rest of the Confederacy.
Exercise Three requires students to analyze Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, explaining why he referenced the Declaration of Independence ("four score and seven years ago") and what he meant by "a new birth of freedom." The response should explain that Lincoln linked the war to the 1776 founding ideal of universal human equality, showing that "a new birth of freedom" meant transforming the nation into a true democracy where the eradication of slavery fulfilled the original promises of the American republic.
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that Lee's northern invasion was a high-stakes gamble to force a negotiated peace before Northern industrial might crushed the South. The defeat at Gettysburg, particularly the tactical disaster of Pickett's Charge, destroyed one-third of Lee's veteran force, permanently eliminating the Confederacy's ability to wage offensive campaigns.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that Vicksburg was the logistical linchpin of the Western theater. Grant's relentless siege starved out the Confederate defenders, establishing unbroken Union naval and military dominance along the entire Mississippi River, severing western cattle and food supplies and fulfilling the central tenet of the Anaconda Plan.
Solution to Exercise Three details that the Gettysburg Address fundamentally redefined American democracy. In just 272 words, Lincoln elevated the sacrifice of battlefield dead into a sacred covenant, moving beyond the original 1787 constitutional compact to demand a moral nation dedicated to universal liberty and enduring government by the people.