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South Carolina is the First to Secede
Delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. -
Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan was called for a blockade of southern ports. The blockade did not clampdown all at once but it was extended by degrees. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The reason Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation was to free the slaves of the Southern States. It decreed that freed slaves could be enlisted in the Union Army, thereby increasing the Union's available manpower. The Emancipation Proclamation led the way to total abolition of slavery in the United States. -
Gettysburg Address
The significance of the Gettysburg Address that Lincoln's short but powerful speech places the Civil War into the historical context of the American fight for freedom. Lincoln says that the war is a test of the ideals for which colonials fought in 1776 in a sense, it's a continuation of the American Revolution. -
Lincoln's Assassination
John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater to see a play. John Booth who was an actor came behind and up the stairs and shot Lincoln on the head. He fled and eventually authorities found him and killed him.
