The Battle of Gettysburg

On the evening of July 1, most of Lee's army of 75,000 reached Gettysburg. Meanwhile, most of the 90,000-man Union army of General George Meade (1815-1872) arrived at Gettysburg that same evening.

On July 2, Lee tried to attack Union positions from the left and right flanks, but northern troops repelled the attack. The next day, the Union army, which expected Lee to attack again on the flanks, reinforced its flanks. But Lee launched a frontal attack on the center of the Union lines, which came as a shock and a surprise. However, a frontal assault against a well-fortified defensive position on a hill was very unlikely to succeed. Some 15,000 Confederate troops, led by General George E. Pickett (1825-1875), marched three-quarters of a mile into withering Union rifle and artillery fire. Although about a hundred Confederate soldiers succeeded in temporarily breaking through the Union defenses, the northern lines held firm. When Lee finally ordered a retreat back into Virginia, it became clear that the Confederacy had suffered a disastrous defeat.

Nearly 25,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing in action at the Battle of Gettysburg. After Gettysburg, Lee was never able to mount another major offensive.


Vicksburg

The four days between July 1 and July 4, 1863 marked a major turning point of the Civil War. Beginning in mid-May, Ulysses S. Grant's troops had begun a siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, Vicksburg allowed the Confederacy to control river traffic between Memphis and New Orleans. The day after the defeat of Lee's army at Gettysburg, Vicksburg surrendered. Five days later, Union forces captured Port Hudson, Louisiana. These victories gave the North complete control of the Mississippi River and isolated confederate territory west of the Mississippi from areas east of the river.

After the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, southern morale began to sag. Yet despite military defeats, inflation, shortages, desertions, the flight of thousands of slaves, and flagging resolve, the Confederacy continued to fight for another 22 months.


Was Lincoln a 'Honkie'?

For much of his political career, Lincoln, like his political idol Henry Clay, was an advocate of colonization, based on his belief that
"the great mass of white people" would refuse to extend equal rights to African Americans. This assumption and prediction, Lincoln believed, "whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded."

In 1862, the President met with a group of African Americans at the White House (no previous President had dreamed of inviting blacks to the White House), and, in what was perhaps the lowest point of his presidency, seemed to blame blacks for the Civil War and predicted that they would have to migrate overseas. Lincoln said "your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people...but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours."

Frederick Douglass condemned the President's remarks. "No sincere wish to improve the condition of the oppressed has dictated" his words, Douglass wrote. " It expresses merely the desire to get rid of them, and reminds one of the politeness with which a man might try to bow out of his house some troublesome creditor or the witness of some old guilt."

In that year, 450 African Americans were recruited to settle on the Island of Vache, off the coast of present-day Haiti. Small pox and mismanagement by a white government-appointed manager contributed to the colony's failure. The transport ship dispatched by President Lincoln picked up only 368 survivors.