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South Carolina votes to secede from the United States
The secession of Southern States led to the establishment of the Confederacy and ultimately the Civil War.
The secession of South Carolina precipitated the outbreak of the American Civil War in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. -
Jefferson Davis elected president of the confederacy
He was elected 1861
He was the first and only president of the confederacy -
Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter
South Carolina could not tolerate a federal fort blocking an important sea port. The state had control of Fort Sumter after secession on December 20, 1860, until Major Anderson moved Union troops to the fort on December 26.
Union major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to Brig. Gen. P.G.T Beauregard's Confederate forces. -
Richmond becomes the capital of the Confederacy
In the Confederate Capital City of Montgomery, Alabama, the decision was made to name the City of Richmond, Virginia as the new Capital of the Confederacy. The Confederate capital was moved to Richmond in recognition of Virginia's strategic importance. -
Confederates surrender at Vicksburg
Two major assaults against the Confederate on May 19 and 22 led to heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. After holding out for more than 40 days, with their supplies nearly gone, the garrison surrendered on July 4. -
First Battle of Bull Run is fought
Federal forces under General Irwin McDowell attempted to flank Confederate positions by crossing Bull Run but were turned back.
In mid-1861, that was enough to make Bull Run the bloodiest battle in American history. -
The Merrimac and the Monitor fight of the Virginia coast
The Merrimack and the Monitor fight of the Virginia coast was most notable as history's first duel between ironclad warships and the beginning of a new era of naval warfare. -
Battle of Shiloh
The Confederate Army launched a surprise attack on Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant in southwestern Tennessee. After initial successes, the Confederates were unable to hold their positions and were forced back, resulting in a Union victory. -
Robert E. Lee is named commander of the Army of Northern Virginia
Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, the most successful of the Southern armies during the American Civil War, and ultimately commanded all the Confederate armies.
Lee commences a series of counterattacks at the Seven Days Battle that drives the enemy away from the Confederate capital. -
Battle of Antietam
The Union had around 87,000 soldiers, while the Confederates had only 38,000.
Union troops under the command of General Joseph Hooker attacked the forces of Stonewall Jackson across a cornfield that lay between them. The fighting was ferocious. -
Lincoln suspends habeas corpus
In 1862, President Lincoln issued Presidential Proclamation 94 which suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
The writ of habeas corpus is a tool preventing the government from unlawfully imprisoning individuals outside of the judicial process -
Battle of Fredericksburg
The Battle of Fredericksburg, fought December 11-15, 1862, was one of the largest and deadliest of the Civil War.
The Union appointed General Ambrose Burnside, Burnside's plan was to cross the river quickly at Fredericksburg, Virginia, surprising General Robert E. Lee's Confederate army, and proceeded 35 miles to Richmond. -
Emancipation Proclamation is announced
The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
Many slave owners in Confederate states simply chose not to tell their slaves about the Emancipation Proclamation and did not honor it. -
Battle of Chancellorsvile
Chancellorsville is known as Confederate general Robert E. Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted in a significant Confederate victory. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg ignited on the morning of July 1, 1863, when the Army of Northern Virginia probed Union positions in northwest Gettysburg.
There was more than 50,000 casualties. -
New York City draft riots
The rioters were overwhelmingly Irish working-class men who did not want to fight in the Civil War and resented that wealthier men, who could afford to pay a $300 commutation fee to hire a substitute, were spared from the draft. -
54th Massachusetts fighting a Second Battle of Ft. Wagner
The Second Battle of Fort Wagner served as the 54th Massachusetts's trial by fire. The all-Black volunteer regiment first experienced combat only two days prior in a comparatively minor skirmish.
Leading the Confederacy to win -
Lincoln gives his Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous speech to honor the men who had fought and died in the Battle of Gettysburg to preserve the Union.His Gettysburg Address was given on Cemetery Hill in the National Soldier Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. -
Atlanta is captured
Union troops reached it on August 31. With their arrival and victory there, the last life line to Atlanta was effectively cut. Hood was forced to abandon Atlanta on the night of September 1 -
Abraham Lincoln defeats George McClellan to win re-election
Throughout the war, McClellan remained an outspoken critic of Lincoln and his managing of the war.
President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. -
Sherman begins his March to the Sea
During the civil war, a devastating total war military campaign, led by union general William Tecumseh Sherman, that involved marching 60,000 union troops through Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah and destroying everything along there way. -
Sherman begins his March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea, coupled with his Atlanta Campaign, may have tipped the scales of victory toward the Union in the Civil War. The destruction wreaked by the operation caused significant Confederate economic loss and diminished Confederate morale, generating deep resentment in Southerners. -
Congress passes the 13th Amendment
The amendment's passage was seen as a way to prevent future conflicts over slavery's legality. Thus, the war's impact on morality, economics, and politics created a favorable environment for the amendment's approval. -
Freedmen's Bureau is created
Congress passed “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees” to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans. -
Lincoln give his second inaugural address
President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address from the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol.
The main point of Lincoln's second inaugural address was to claim that both the South and North had to share some of the blame for the sin of slavery. -
Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox
Lee desperately sought a train loaded with supplies for his troops but encountered none. Grant, realizing that Lee's army was running out of options, sent a letter to Lee on April 7 requesting the Confederate general's surrender. -
Appomattox Court House--Surrender of Lee’s forces
Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union general Ulysses S. Grant, precipitating the capitulation of other Confederate forces and leading to the end of the bloodiest conflict in American history. -
President Lincoln Assassinated
Lincoln was assassinated in 1865
He was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theater -
John Wilkes Booth is killed
In the pandemonium, a soldier named Boston Corbett fired into the barn and hit Booth in the neck, mortally wounding him. Corbett would later claim Booth had raised his pistol to shoot at the troops.
John Wilkes Booth is buried in an unmarked grave in the Booth family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. -
Richmond falls to the Union Army
Richmond was important to the Union in that its capture would signal the end of the Confederacy. Richmond fell when Lt. General Grant attacked Five Forks on March 31, 1865, to cut Lee's last remaining supply line. -
Abraham Lincoln elected president
Abraham Lincoln was morally opposed to slavery, but his drive to become president was not to instantly abolish slavery, but to keep the Union together.
The 1860 election gave Lincoln a victory in both the popular vote and the electoral vote, with just under 40 percent of the popular vote.