The Battle of Gettysburg Fought July 1 through July 3, 1863, considered by most military historians the turning point in the American Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive engagement in that it arrested the Confederates' second and last major invasion of the North, destroyed their offensive strategy, and forced them to fight a defensive war in which the inadequacies of their manufacturing capacity and transportation facilities doomed them to defeat. The Army of the Potomac, under the Union general George Gordon Meade, numbered about 85,000; the Confederate army, under General Robert E. Lee, numbered about 75,000. After the Battle of Cha