Hill at the end of day one) that his replacements were unable or unwilling to take. Lee himself shared this belief and is said to have told his subordinate generals on different occasions that they should have acted like Jackson would have. Union capture of Vicksburg and victory at Gettysburg (July 1863) On July 4, 1863, the most important Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. The previous day, Maj. Gen. George Meade had decisively defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. These nearly simultaneous battles are the events most often cited as the ultimate turning points of the entire war. The loss of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two, denying it any further movement along or across the Mississippi River and preventing supplies from Texas and Arkansas that might sustain the war effort from passing east. As President Lincoln had stated, "See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.... We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy and they can defy us from Vicksburg." Gettysburg was the first major defeat suffered by Lee. The three-day battle witnessed the Union Army of the Potomac decisively repel his second invasion of the North and inflicted serious casualties on his Army of Northern Virginia. In fact, the National Park Service marks the point at which Pickett's Charge collapsed, a copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge, as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. From this point onward, Lee attempted no more strategic offensives. Although two more years of fighting and a new, more aggressive general-in-chief (Grant) were required to fully subdue the rebellion, the eventual end at Appomattox Court House in 1865 seems inevitable in hindsight. While Gettysburg was seen by military and civilian observers at the time as a great battle, those in the North had little idea that two more bloody years would be required to finish the war. Lincoln was distraught at Meade's failure to intercept Lee's retreat, believing that to have done so would have ended the conflict. Southern morale was seriously affected by the twin setbacks of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, as they perceived that "the coil was tightening around us". Some economic historians have pointed to the fact that after the defeats at Gettysburg and