The World as We Know It
The Battle of Gettysburg set the stage for the Union's prompt victory over the Confederates. When the battle ended, it also discontinued General Robert E. Lee's final thrust against the Union and mandated Lee to operate on the defensive instead of the offensive. In turn, this battle assisted the Union on its way to finishing the war by eliminating a very real and dangerous threat that consisted of General Lee’s forces. These men under Lee’s control were calculating, powerful, and even thought to be an unstoppable force by many officers at the time. Stopping and then repelling this unstoppable force was simply mystifying to forces on both sides. This also heightened morale for the Union forces as they saw that if the best troops that the Confederates controlled could be crushed, then there was aspiration that they could still win the war. This caused a spur of new Union troops to join and fortified the number of the Union’s soldiers to a further extent. With this fresh tenacity from the Union forces, in a matter of two years the war came to an abrupt finish with the Union being victorious. This termination to the war also led to the abolition of slavery as the Emancipation Proclamation could now be enforced onto the southern states. As a result, due to Meade’s decisive actions at Gettysburg, victory of the Union over the Confederate States was made possible and the two very different societies united together again to form the United States that is known and loved today.