On the heels of a stunning victory in Chancellorsville, Virginia, Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee desired a major triumph in Northern territory. He invaded with 75,000 troops and, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, met General George G. Meade’s 85,000-strong Union Army of the Potomac. The resulting conflict, taking place between July 1 and 3, 1863, was the turning point of the Civil War and the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.

The shooting began when a Confederate brigade, looking in Gettysburg for needed footwear, came upon Northern cavalry. That first day, Confederate troops drove the Union Army through town but failed to capture high ground to the south, where the Union assumed a strong defensive position. On the second day, Lee initiated assaults on the flanks of the Union line, but the North held its position. Lee next ordered an attack on the center of the column. Led by Major General George E. Pickett, 15,000 Confederate soldiers marched across a half-mile of open field toward 10,000 Union troops firing from atop Cemetery Ridge; only a few Confederate troops ascended the ridge as “Pickett’s Charge” was repulsed. The South retreated on the Fourth of July.

After the defeat at Gettysburg, Lee lamented, “It’s all my fault.” He offered his resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who refused it. Its manpower nearly exhausted, the South would fight hopelessly for two more years.

PostScript: More than 50,000 troops died during the three-day battle. In November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address honored the “brave men … who struggled here” at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the site.