One Union soldier said Gen.

Grant habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall and was about to do it. His words would be prophetic in one the most important battles in the civil war, the Siege of Vicksburg. Confederate President Jefferson Davis said "Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South's two halves together." President Abraham Lincoln knew that the Confederacy had a strategic point in the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi and ordered Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee to led the Vicksburg campaign. After Grants Army crossed the Mississippi River the battles of Port Gibson and Raymond allowed him to capture Jackson, the capital of the state of Mississippi in the middle of May of 1863 and put the C.S.A leaders in a defensive position at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge, but the attempts to stop the Union Army were unsuccessful. With 45,000 Union soldiers against 31,000 Confederate troops led by Confederate Gen. John C. Pemberton, Gen. Grant wanted to overwhelm the Confederates before they could fully organize. With this situation C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis ask Gen. Robert E. Lee to call of Gen. James Longstreet and his corps to arrive in Vicksburg. Gen. Lee had a different plan; he would move his army north and invade the Union. Forcing President Lincoln to order Grant to abandon his Vicksburg campaign and head northeast to help protect Washington. With the decision of Gen. Lee to invade the north, the other major battle of the Civil War would be fought on 1-3 of July 1863 in Gettysburg PA. On the first day, On 1 July, the Confederate units began to concentrate on a junction of several roads at Gettysburg, Union Cavalry scouts and artillery batteries deployed to confront the C.S.A advance. On second day of battle, 65,000 Confederate soldiers were faces to face with 85,000 federal troops in the

battlefield; most of both armies had been ready for the battle. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation similar to a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, this move was unusual because the war was fought mainly during the day, the fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, leadership deployed full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines. On the third day of battle, July 3, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett's Charge. The charge was repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great losses to the Confederate army. Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. In the Aftermath of the bloody battle the two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties and ended with Gen. Robert E. Lee's defeat and would be a blow to the Confederacy, one blow that they would not recover. The Siege of Vicksburg and the battle of Gettysburg were two key Union victories that would become a turning point of the war, with the Union control of the Mississippi, the Confederacy lost major military and naval operations on west of the Mississippi River and kept control during the rest of the war, and with the victory of Union Maj. Gen. George G. Meade in Gettysburg the invasion of the north led by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee ended.