The High Water Mark

At Gettysburg, the Confederates who carried out Pickett's Charge made a last great assault that General Robert E. Lee said was conducted with magnificent behavior, but the attack failed to break the Union defenses. Union soldiers here greeted the ebbing Confederate assault with hurrahs after 12,000 Confederates had hurled themselves against the line and nearly half had been killed, wounded, or captured. Major General George G. Meade prepared for another attack on July 4, but it never came, and that night Lee's army began its muddy retreat into Virginia. In later years, Pickett's Charge and its failure became known as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy; although the war continued for nearly two more years, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia never invaded the North again, and one Union officer later wrote that from that time on the rebellion's march was toward Appomattox. After Gettysburg, Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania was repulsed on July 3, 1863; Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on July 4, giving the North control of the Mississippi River; Chickamauga on September 20 brought the last great Southern victory; Chattanooga from November 23 to 25 sent Bragg's Confederate army retreating into Georgia; Grant's Virginia Campaign of May and June 1864 included the battles of Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor and drove Lee back on Richmond and Petersburg; Sherman occupied Atlanta on September 2 and began the March to the Sea on November 15; Thomas crushed the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Nashville on December 15 and 16; Sherman occupied Savannah on December 21 and further divided the Confederacy; Grant broke Lee's line at Petersburg on April 2, 1865, after a ten-month siege and closed in on Richmond; Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9; and Johnston surrendered Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida at Durham Station on April 26.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania · United States