Turning point of the American Civil War

There is widespread disagreement over the turning point of the American Civil War. The idea of a turning point is an event after which most observers would agree that the eventual outcome was inevitable. While the Battle of Gettysburg is the most widely cited (often in combination with the Siege of Vicksburg, which concluded a day later), there are several other arguable turning points in the American Civil War. Possibilities are presented here in chronological order. Only the positive arguments for each are given.

At the time of the event, the fog of war often makes it impossible to recognize all of the implications of any one victory. Hindsight reveals the endpoint and all the developments that led up to it. In most cases, contemporary observers may lack confidence in predicting a turning point. In the Civil War, many of the turning points cited by historians would not have been recognized as such at the time.

The First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, was the first major land battle of the war. Until this time, the North was generally confident about its prospects for quickly crushing the rebellion with an easy, direct strike against the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. The embarrassing rout of Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell's army made clear the fallacy of this viewpoint. Northerners were shocked and realized that this was going to be a lengthier, bloodier war than they had anticipated. It steeled their determination. Lincoln immediately signed legislation that increased the army by 500,000 men and allowed for their term of service to be for the duration of the war. Congress quickly passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which provided for freeing slaves whose masters participated in the rebellion, which was the first attempt to define the war legislatively as a matter of ending slavery. If Confederates had hoped before this that they could sap Northern determination and quietly slip away from the Union with a minor military investment, their victory at Bull Run, ironically, destroyed those hopes.

By mid-1861, eleven states had seceded, but four more slave-owning states remained in the Union—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Kentucky was considered the most at risk; the state legislature had declared neutrality in the dispute, which was a moderately pro-Confederate stance. The loss of Kentucky would have been catastrophic because of its control of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers and its position from which the vital state of Ohio could be invaded. Lincoln wrote, "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game."

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