The Union army failed to capture Richmond and won at Antietam only because the Confederates withdrew from the field first. In the western part of the Confederacy, the Army of the West won the Battle of Shiloh, and the Union navy captured New Orleans and Memphis.
At the beginning of 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in areas under rebellion. This changed the war from one in which the North fought to preserve the Union to one in which it fought to free enslaved African Americans. On the battlefield, Union forces led by Grant captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, ...