"Vicksburg Surrenders, July 4, 1863 - day after Gettysburg!" Topic

Oddly, Gettyburg was not recognized at the time as the "turning point" of the war, but Vicksburg was.

GdeP

Oddly, Gettysburg was not recognized at the time as the "turning point" of the war, but Vicksburg was.

GdeP

Strategic implications of Vicksburg….control of the Mississippi and splitting the confederate east from west, were probably more obvious to layman and the public at the time and could easily be illustrated with a map graphic in the period newspapers.

Great victory by US Grant!!!!

Oddly, Gettysburg was not recognized at the time as the "turning point" of the war, but Vicksburg was.

And they were right. Or, at least, it was ONE turning point, and a very important one.

Vicksburg got good PR, but it didn't split the Confederacy. That happened a few days later when Port Hudson surrendered to Banks' army.

Important as Vicksburg and Port Hudson were I wouldn't call either turning points. In 1863 the imbalance of resources in the Mississippi was so far in favor of the U.S. that it wasn't a question of if the U.S. could clear the Mississippi of Confederate garrisons. It was a question of when.

The American Civil War was a long, hard slog. There were no decisive battles in the tradition of Jena-Auerstadt. It's just very hard to come to terms with the fact that thousands of men could die, and yet it meant little or nothing. I read an account of the war, written soon after Shiloh in April, 1862, which claimed that this had to have been the decisive battle of the war, one of the great battles of history, rating up there with Waterloo. No, it was just followed by the Seven Pines, then Seven Days, then Second Bull Run, Antietam, Perryville, Fredericksburg, and Murfreesboro. Each time the North failed to break the Confederate will to continue the fight until they gained their independence. Each time, the Confederacy failed to break the Union's will to reunite the nation.

Yes, if Lee had won at Gettysburg, he could have threatened the great cities of the North, and capturing one or two of them might have brought the war to an end, just as McClellan capturing Richmond in 1862 might have brought the war to an end.

The fall of Vicksburg/Port Hudson blocked the large scale flow of men and supplies from the trans-Mississippi to the eastern states, and vice versa. Even so, it was more of a gradual dismemberment of the Confederacy than a decisive blow.

The length of the front, from the Chesapeake to Pea Ridge is 1500 miles (2400 kilometers) roughly the distance from Leningrad to the Crimea. Given that much area, a real, slam-bang decisive battle was probably impossible.

Grelber

This was indeed a catastrophic week for the Confederacy back in 1863.

If I had to pick two decisive points in the war I would pick Gettysburg, which put the Confederacy permanently on the defensive, and Grant's decision to go south after the Wilderness, which signaled that the North would not stop short of total victory.

Vicksburg (and Port Hudson, whose fall was made inevitable by Vicksburg's surrender) not only split the Confederacy and opened the Mississippi to the Union (both important in themselves) but also meant the surrender of some 30,000 Confederate troops and, perhaps most importantly, the recognition of Grant's abilities, leading, first, to his appointment to overall command in the West (which did more than anything to save the Army of the Cumberland from a very sticky situation), and then to general-in-chief (which ultimately won the war).

Gettysburg might be considered an "anti-turning point" in that, yes, IF Lee had won, THAT would have been a major turning point, perhaps the decisive one. So Meade's defensive victory prevented that and ended Lee's string of victories, but it was a long way from making Union victory inevitable. By the same token, Grant's victory at Chattanooga was an "anti-turning point," in that had he not gotten the Army of the Cumberland out of its fix (and with it, the Army of the Ohio at Knoxville) the war would certainly have turned in the Confederacy's favor.

Grant's decision to move south (actually southeast) after the Wilderness was important, but it was pure Grant. I doubt that he even considered NOT doing so. His mission was to either destroy Lee's army OR drive it back to Richmond, where the Army of the Potomac would link up with the Army of the James. In the Wilderness he had failed to do the first (so far), so he continued on his way to do the second. The real turning point in the East was (as Porter Alexander said) not Gettysburg (or the Wilderness) but when Grant stole a march on Lee and crossed the James River without interference.

I believe Vicksburg was the far more significant victory. It cut the Confederacy in half and gave the Union freedom of movement on the Mississippi.

Gettysburg represents the high water for the Confederacy, but strategically accomplish very little. It gets a lot of the press because it was in the eastern theater, Lee never invaded the north again, and Lee was in command…certainly a media darling (and, great tactician).

I would think a better nominee for the Confederacy's high-water mark was when Bragg was in Kentucky and Lee was in Maryland.

It's best chance to win, however, was probably Chickamauga, or its immediate aftermath -- if the Army of the Cumberland had been virtually destroyed or forced to surrender.

This was interesting. We over estimate the importance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Prof Gallagher, a professor of American history at the University of Virginia, considers that these were not the critical battles of the war.

This BTW is a transcript, Gallagher knows that Crop and core are not the same, some intern trying to get this lot down, doesn't.

link

Gettysburg and Vicksburg were not the beginning of the end, but they (and throw in Rosecrans' Tullahoma campaign) could reasonably be called the end of the beginning.