The Ten Most Significant Battles of the Civil War 
At the bottom of each page is the link for the next page in order all the way to the end of the war.
I based this list on the effect of a battle not on its size or casualty list. Not everyone will agree with me on this.
I have provided links to my pages describing the battle. I have been to the sites with pictures bellow.
Try the Civil War Today Quiz.
1. 1st Bull Run
Before Bull Run people thought the Civil War would be short, no more than a month long. It was believed by most folks at the time that there would be one big battle and then it would be over. After Bull Run no one could say that the war would be over in a month. Had the South lost the battle the war might have ended shortly, but the South won so it was not to be.
2. Port Royal, SC
After the Union lost at Bull Run the Secretary of the Navy realized that he was going to have to blockade the South and starve it into submission. To do so he needed a port between Fort Monroe, VA and the Florida Keyes. After studying maps his team of advisers settled on Port Royal thirty miles south of Charleston, SC as the perfect location for a major Union repair and supply base. Port Royal made the blockade successful and it was the blockade that doomed the Southern Cause.
Port Royal: Here begins the strangulation of the South.
3. New Orleans, LA
Like Port Royal, the capture of New Orleans gave the Union a critical port for maintaining the blockade against the South’s gulf ports. It also denied any real use of the Mississippi to the Confederacy; the great river stopped its role as a major Southern shipping route and became an obstacle they had to cross. New Orleans was the largest city in the Confederacy, losing it so early in the war was a major blow to their ability to wage war elsewhere and was a blow to Confederate morale early in the war when thing seemed to be going their way in Virginia.
4. Glorieta Pass, NM
Who knows if Sibley could have carried out his plans for the West; they were big plans that would made the Confederacy a coast to coast power and given it control of the California gold fields. Los Angeles was to become the major Confederate sea port and Sibley planned to build a rail line from the there to San Antonio, Texas to move the massive amount of supplies that the Confederacy desperately needed. Remember, most of the Union Navy was tied up in the Atlantic and could not have survived a trip around the Cape, anyway. It would have been very difficult for the North to have extended the Blockade to the West Coast especially in 1862 when Sibley was planning on invading California. He even wanted to attack Mexico and add the three northern states of Mexico to Texas as slave holding territory. He was nothing if not audacious. After Glorieta Pass there was no question about it, Sibley was done and the South’s best chance to win the war outright was over.
Glorieta Pass: The whole battle was fought at over 6,000 ft elevation.
5. The Seven Days
The Seven Days was either a string of battles or one really big, long one, in six parts, that turned the Union Army under McClellan back from Richmond and prolonged the war. Either way you look at it, it would be a long time and a lot of Union Generals later before a Northern army would get back to the gates of Richmond.
Malvern Hill: Porter's cannon line stopped the Confederate attack cold.
6. Shiloh, TN/Corinth, MS
At Corinth the Union cut the Confederacies rail lines, making the movement of men and supplies from west to east very difficult. While the blockade prevented war materials from entering by sea from Europe, the Union victory at Corinth worked to starve the Confederacy by cutting the flow of food from Louisiana and Texas to the rest South, and put a Union army right there in northern Mississippi like a thumb in the eye. Of course, without the battle of Shiloh there couldn't have been a battle at Corinth; and it was Shiloh that bled the Confederate army white, making it vulnerable to attack when it fell back to its base at Corinth. Shiloh and Corinth may be seen as two parts of the same battle, just like you can think of WWI and WWII as two parts of the same war.
Shiloh: The Sunken Road.
7. Vicksburg, MS
Lincoln called Vicksburg the key to the South and once he had it in his pocket the outcome of the war was inevitable. The Union victory at Vicksburg split the South in two and cut off the flow of food from Louisiana and weapons smuggled into Texas from Mexico almost completely. It also was critical in opening up the Mississippi for use by the Union as a transportation route, making it a Union highway through otherwise difficult country. A big factor for the North was keeping as much of the divided nation together and behind the war as possible. Iowa farmers were screaming that they couldn’t get their crops to market with the Mississippi closed and demanded that the river be opened for their continued support. When you look at monuments on battlefields, there are a great many of them for Iowa Regiments.
Vicksburg: Cannon made difficult terrain more difficult
8. Pea Ridge, AR
Pea Ridge was fought a long way from the population centers in the East. While it was covered by the major publications its significance was not understood by the bulk of the population. The Northern victory at Pea Ridge turned the Southern Army back from Missouri once and for all; it denied the South an important source of men and food; but it also meant the South was shrinking and collapsing back on itself.
Pea Ridge: Union Artillery line on the last day.
9. Forts Henry and Donnellson
I know these are two separate battles but their effect was combined, more than anything they launched Grant on his way to the top of the Union pile and sent him toward Shiloh and destiny. They also turned the Confederate Army back from their attempt to take Kentucky, a border state that could have gone either way as far as the rebellion went.
10. Five Forks
Petersburg was the door to Richmond and Richmond was the Confederate capitol. McClellan recognized this in 1862 but Lincoln interfered with Little Mac’s plans and pulled him back to Washington, it would take Grant’s bloody Overland Campaign in 1864 to get the Army of the Potomac back to the place where McClellan had been sitting two years earlier. Grant’s move over the James River was even a copy of McClellan’s plan before Lincoln interfered; but, once Grant got there the whole battle bogged down into a siege that seemed to go on forever. Some Union politicians began advocating for a negotiated peace. This would have had the same effect as a Union capitulation; the United States would have ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Grant was winning at Petersburg; it just didn’t appear that way in the North: Until Five Forks. At Five Forks Sheridan collapsed the Confederate right flank and forced the Confederate Army out of Richmond. It was the beginning of the end for Lee.
Five Forks: The middle of the line and the begining of the end.
A short defense of my choices
A more traditional Eastern centric list might be:
(Pages I have up are in blue and are linked)
- Gettysburg
- Manassas I
- Antietam
- Chancellorsville
- Fredericksburg
- Vicksburg
- The Wilderness
- Cold Harbor
- Spotsylvania Courthouse
- Atlanta
Different folks would change the order depending upon their own interest and might swap out Chickamauga or Shiloh for Spotsylvania; but the basic list would remain the same. The driving force behind choosing these battles is their terrible casualty lists: And Lee, people like battles with Robert E. Lee in command. Lee grabbed the popular imagination because he was usually fighting some place that was an easy buggy ridge from Washington and the Willard Hotel where the Northern Press held court and he got a lot of copy.
If you look at it, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse are all practically all fought on the same battlefield. They fought at nearby Manassas/Bull Run twice. Cold Harbor was fought on the Gains Mill battlefield. While it is true that Lee won some amazing victories, they didn’t lead to anything. Even The Wilderness was just a draw, with both sides claimed victory when it was over. The significance of the battle wasn’t the fight itself, but rather the advance by the right flank that Grant made when he decided the battle wasn’t going anywhere; likewise, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor.
Antietam was a draw where Lee went home just like Polk, Hooker and McClellan did. Folks have just chosen to ignore that aspect of the battle because, well, it was Lee. Same thing at Gettysburg, the battle stopped after the third day with a smash Confederate victory, over at the base of Big Roundtop, against a poorly considered Union attack. Lee chose to go home rather than advance, he was low on supplies and out of artillery, but those things would have been true even if the Union Army had run away from Pickett’s Charge, so it is hard to imagine how Lee might have done any more with his move north than fight one battle and go home regardless of what happened.
My choices as I spell out above are battles that made a difference in the strategic situation. Like Bull Run I which meant that the nation was in for a long hard war, or Glorieta Pass that meant the South was not going to win out right. Comments welcome.
Next: Fort Sumter