Where the Civil War was decided, and what it cost, 1861 to 1865
The Civil War was fought in more than 10,000 places, from farm fields to river towns. A handful of them changed its course. This page follows eight, in order: the shots at Fort Sumter, the shock of Bull Run, Grant’s rise at Fort Donelson, the bloody day at Antietam that opened the way to emancipation, the twin turning points of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, Sherman’s March through Georgia, and the surrender at Appomattox.
Somewhere between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers died in the war, most of them from disease rather than bullets. Casualty figures below are historians’ estimates and include the wounded, captured and missing as well as the dead.
Map Timeline
The numbers on this schematic map follow the order of events. Select a site on the map or in the list to jump to its card. The map is a simplified drawing, not to scale.
Each card gives the date, place, commanders, outcome and estimated casualties, then explains why the battle mattered.
1Fort Sumter
Date
April 12–13, 1861
Place
Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
Commanders
Union: Maj. Robert Anderson. Confederate: Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard
Outcome
Confederate victory; Anderson surrendered the fort on April 13
Casualties
No one was killed by enemy fire. During the surrender salute on April 14 a gun accident killed one Union soldier, Private Daniel Hough, and fatally wounded another.
Confederate batteries began firing at 4:30 a.m. on April 12 and pounded the fort for some 34 hours. On April 15 Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. That call pushed four more slave states (Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee) to secede.
Why it mattered: An almost bloodless bombardment started a war that would kill hundreds of thousands. Because the Confederacy fired first, Northerners rallied to defend the Union. (The full story of how the country got here is on the Causes page.)
2First Bull Run (First Manassas)
Date
July 21, 1861
Place
Near Manassas Junction, Virginia, about 30 miles from Washington
Commanders
Union: Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell. Confederate: Brig. Gens. P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston
Outcome
Confederate victory; Union troops retreated in disorder to Washington
Casualties
About 4,700 killed, wounded, captured or missing (estimate): about 2,950 Union and 1,750 Confederate (American Battlefield Trust)
Civilians rode out from Washington expecting to watch a quick Union win. Instead, Confederate reinforcements arriving by railroad turned the battle. Here Thomas J. Jackson earned the nickname “Stonewall” for holding his brigade firm on Henry Hill.
Why it mattered: It ended hopes on both sides of a short war. The Union began building a much larger, better-trained army, and Lincoln soon gave command to George B. McClellan.
3Fort Donelson
Date
February 11–16, 1862
Place
Cumberland River, near Dover, Tennessee
Commanders
Union: Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate: Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was left in command after his two superiors fled
Outcome
Union victory; Buckner surrendered the fort and its garrison
Casualties
Roughly 12,000 to 13,000 Confederates were captured (estimates vary)
Why it mattered: It was the first major Union victory of the war. It opened the Cumberland River and much of Tennessee to Union armies and made Grant famous for a short note demanding surrender (see Primary Sources).
4Antietam (Sharpsburg)
Date
September 17, 1862
Place
Along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland
Commanders
Union: Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan. Confederate: Gen. Robert E. Lee
Outcome
Tactically a draw, but Lee’s invasion of the North ended and he retreated to Virginia, so it counted as a Union strategic victory
Casualties
About 23,000 killed, wounded, captured or missing in a single day (estimate), the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. About 3,600 or more were killed outright; counts vary.
Lee had carried the war into Maryland hoping a victory on Northern soil would win European recognition and weaken Northern support for the war. Fighting raged through a cornfield, along a sunken farm road soon called “Bloody Lane,” and over a stone bridge. McClellan, who had more men, did not follow up and let Lee’s army escape across the Potomac.
Why it mattered: Lincoln had drafted an emancipation order that summer but waited for a victory so it would not look desperate. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The final version took effect January 1, 1863. It turned the war into a fight against slavery as well as for the Union, opened the army to Black soldiers, and made it far harder for Britain or France to side with the Confederacy.
5Vicksburg
Date
Siege May 18–July 4, 1863 (campaign from spring 1863)
Place
Vicksburg, Mississippi, on bluffs above the Mississippi River
Commanders
Union: Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate: Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton
Outcome
Union victory; Pemberton surrendered his army on July 4, 1863
Casualties
About 29,500 Confederate soldiers surrendered (estimate). Casualties across the whole campaign ran into the tens of thousands; estimates vary.
After months of failed attempts, Grant marched his army down the west bank of the river, crossed below the city, won a string of battles inland and then trapped Pemberton inside Vicksburg. During the six-week siege, soldiers and civilians ran short of food, and some families lived in caves dug into the hillsides to escape the shelling.
Why it mattered: With Vicksburg gone, and Port Hudson, Louisiana, surrendering on July 9, the Union controlled the whole Mississippi River. The Confederacy was split in two, cut off from Texas, Arkansas and most of Louisiana. The victory also made Grant the Union’s leading general.
6Gettysburg
Date
July 1–3, 1863
Place
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Commanders
Union: Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. Confederate: Gen. Robert E. Lee
Outcome
Union victory; Lee retreated to Virginia on July 4
Casualties
About 51,000 killed, wounded, captured or missing on both sides (estimate), the largest number of any battle of the war
Lee invaded the North a second time. Over three days the armies fought over the town, its ridges, and hills such as Little Round Top. On July 3, about 12,500 Confederates attacked the Union center on Cemetery Ridge in the assault known as Pickett’s Charge. It was thrown back with terrible losses.
Why it mattered: Lee never again invaded the North. Coming the same week as Vicksburg, Gettysburg is often called a twin turning point: after July 1863 the Confederacy was on the defensive. That November, Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery there with the Gettysburg Address (see Primary Sources).
7Sherman’s March to the Sea
Date
Atlanta captured September 2, 1864; march November 15–December 21, 1864
Place
From Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, roughly 300 miles
Commanders
Union: Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, about 60,000 men. Confederate: no army could stop him; cavalry under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler and Savannah’s garrison under Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee
Outcome
Union victory; Savannah was taken on December 21, 1864
Casualties
Battle casualties were light compared with the great battles, but the march destroyed railroads, mills, crops and homes across a band of Georgia up to about 60 miles wide. Sherman’s own report put the damage at about $100 million, at least $20 million of which he said had “inured to our advantage,” and the rest “simple waste and destruction.”
Sherman cut loose from his supply lines and had his army live off the land. Soldiers tore up railroad track and twisted the rails. Foragers took food and livestock, and some soldiers looted homes. Thousands of enslaved people left plantations to follow the army toward freedom. At Ebenezer Creek in December 1864, a Union general pulled up a pontoon bridge before the freedpeople following his corps could cross. Many drowned or were recaptured by Confederate cavalry.
Why it mattered: The fall of Atlanta helped Lincoln win re-election in November 1864, which meant the war would be fought to the end. The march showed that the Confederacy could not protect its own heartland. In January 1865 Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, setting aside coastal land for freed families, the origin of the phrase “forty acres.” That order was later reversed.
8Appomattox Court House
Date
April 9, 1865
Place
Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house
Commanders
Union: Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate: Gen. Robert E. Lee
Outcome
Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia
Casualties
About 28,000 Confederate soldiers were paroled (estimate). Fighting in the final week of the retreat from Petersburg and Richmond cost thousands of casualties on both sides.
After a nine-month siege at Petersburg, Lee’s lines broke and Richmond fell on April 3. Cut off and starving, his army was surrounded near Appomattox. Grant offered generous terms: Confederate soldiers could go home on parole, keeping their horses and the officers their side arms, as long as they did not take up arms again.
Why it mattered: Lee’s surrender convinced most of the South that the war was lost, but it did not end the war all at once. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina on April 26, and the last organized Confederate forces surrendered in June 1865. On April 14, five days after Appomattox, Lincoln was shot; he died the next morning. On June 19, 1865, Union troops announced emancipation in Galveston, Texas, the day now remembered as Juneteenth.
Primary Sources
Five documents from the war years, quoted exactly from reliable editions. Read them for what they reveal about each side’s purposes.
“SIR:—Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”
Ulysses S. Grant to Simon B. Buckner, Camp near Donelson, February 16, 1862
Buckner asked for talks. Grant refused any bargaining. Buckner called the terms “ungenerous and unchivalrous” but surrendered. The note made Grant a national hero in the North.
“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. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—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.”
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, delivered November 19, 1863. Text of the Bliss copy (1864)
Which version? Five copies in Lincoln’s handwriting survive, and their wording differs slightly. This is the Bliss copy, written in 1864 for a fundraiser for soldiers. It is the last copy Lincoln wrote and the only one he signed and dated, and it is the text carved on the Lincoln Memorial. No one recorded exactly what Lincoln said on the day. In about 270 words he recast the war as a struggle for “a new birth of freedom.”
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country.”
William T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun, Mayor of Atlanta, and the city council, September 12, 1864
Atlanta’s leaders protested Sherman’s order forcing civilians to leave the city. Sherman refused to back down and blamed the war’s suffering on secession. Ask yourself whether his argument justifies what his army did next.
“After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. … By the terms of the Agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain there until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.”
Robert E. Lee, General Order No. 9, farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia, April 10, 1865 (drafted by his aide Col. Charles Marshall)
Lee blames defeat on the North’s “overwhelming numbers and resources.” That framing became a foundation of the “Lost Cause” myth, which recast the Confederacy as a noble fight and played down slavery as its cause. Notice what the order says, and what it leaves out.
“…all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…”
Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, quoting the preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862
The words Lincoln announced after Antietam. Note the limit: “in rebellion.” Enslaved people in the loyal border states were not covered.
Why no soldier’s letter? The most quoted one, Sullivan Ballou’s 1861 letter to his wife, survives only in later copies; the original has never been found. Rather than present it as certain, this page leaves it out. Your library or the Library of Congress’s digitized soldiers’ diaries are a good place to find letters with a clear history.
Key Terms
Turning point
An event after which the course of the war clearly changed direction.
Casualties
Soldiers killed, wounded, captured or missing. Not the same as deaths.
Siege
Surrounding a city or fort and cutting off supplies to force a surrender.
Unconditional surrender
Giving up with no promises or terms from the winner.
Emancipation
Freeing people from slavery.
Border states
Slave states that stayed in the Union: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri (and later West Virginia).
Hard war
Sherman’s strategy of destroying the resources that kept the enemy fighting.
Parole
A promise by a captured soldier not to fight again until formally exchanged.
Anaconda Plan
The Union plan to blockade Southern ports and control the Mississippi, squeezing the Confederacy.
Lost Cause
A postwar myth that recast the Confederacy as a noble, doomed fight and denied that slavery caused the war.
Discussion Questions
Antietam was a tactical draw. Why could Lincoln still treat it as the victory he needed?
Which was more important, Gettysburg or Vicksburg? Make a case using geography and morale.
Sherman wrote that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Was his march a justified military strategy, or did it cross a line? What about Ebenezer Creek?
Compare Grant’s note at Fort Donelson with his terms at Appomattox. Why might he have been so much more generous in 1865?
The Gettysburg Address never names a side, a general or slavery. What is it about, and why do you think Lincoln chose those words?
Lee’s General Order No. 9 blames defeat on “overwhelming numbers and resources.” How did that idea feed the Lost Cause myth?
Test Yourself
Ten questions on the war’s turning points. Click an answer to check it.
From Sumter to Appomattox
Sources
Where the quotations and figures on this page come from. All the documents quoted are in the public domain.
Primary sources quoted
U. S. Grant to S. B. Buckner, February 16, 1862, in Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York, 1885), vol. 1. Free at Project Gutenberg #4367.
Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863. National Archives, transcript.
W. T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun and others, September 12, 1864, in Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (New York, 1875), vol. 2. Free at Project Gutenberg #4361.
Battle dates, commanders and casualty estimates: National Park Service battlefield parks and the American Battlefield Trust’s Civil War battle pages. Figures differ between sources because records were incomplete.
March to the Sea damage estimate: Sherman’s report of January 1, 1865, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, vol. 44, p. 13.
War deaths: J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4 (December 2011).
Narrative history: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford University Press, 1988).