Battle of Gettysburg
The nature of the result of the Battle of Gettysburg has been the subject of controversy for years. Although not seen as overwhelmingly significant at the time, particularly since the war continued for almost two years, in retrospect it has often been cited as the "turning point", usually in combination with the fall of Vicksburg the following day. This is based on the observation that after Gettysburg Lee's army conducted no more strategic offensives—his army merely reacted to the initiative of Ulysses S. Grant in 1864 and 1865—and by the speculative viewpoint of the Lost Cause writers that a Confederate victory at Gettysburg might have resulted in the end of the war.
It is currently a widely held view that Gettysburg was a decisive victory for the Union, but the term is considered imprecise. It is inarguable that Lee's offensive on July 3 was turned back decisively and his campaign in Pennsylvania was terminated prematurely (although the Confederates at the time argued that this was a temporary setback and that the goals of the campaign were largely met). However, when the more common definition of "decisive victory" is intended—an indisputable military victory of a battle that determines or significantly influences the ultimate result of a conflict—historians are divided. For example, David J. Eicher called Gettysburg a "strategic loss for the Confederacy" and James M. McPherson wrote that "Lee and his men would go on to earn further laurels. But they never again possessed the power and reputation they carried into Pennsylvania those palmy summer days of 1863."
118th Infantry Regiment (United States)
In December of the same year, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia defeated Union General Ambrose E. Burnside's Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Union forces repeatedly made frontal assaults across open ground against fortified Confederate positions. The string of southern victories came to an end when Robert E. Lee was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettsyburg between 1 and 3 July 1863 by the Army of the Potomac under General George G. Meade. This is regarded by most historians as the turning point of the Civil War. The Retreat from Gettysburg was arduous, and the weakened South Carolinians were defeated again at the Battle of Lookout Mountain in November 1863. The survivors of the original 1st South Carolina would go on to retreat from Union forces at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm in September 1864, but in their last major action of the war, the Second Battle of Deep Bottom, they forced a Union retreat. After the South's surrender, the 1st South Carolina was called up again in 1898 to participate in the Spanish–American War, but did not see any major combat.