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Kansas is admitted as a state with a constitution prohibiting slavery.
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Lincoln orders a blockade of all Confederate ports
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Fort Sumter is bombarded and surrenders to South Carolina troops led by P. G. T. Beauregard.
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Abraham Lincoln is elected President, with Hannibal Hamlin as his Vice President.
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This is the day that South Carolina Secedes from the Union.
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Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as 16th President of the United States of America.
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At 4:30 a.m. Confederates under Gen. Pierre Beauregard open fire with 50 cannons upon Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The Civil War begins
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Virginia secedes from the Union, followed within five weeks by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, thus forming an eleven state Confederacy with a population of 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves. The Union will soon have 21 states and a population of over 20 million.
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President Lincoln issues a Proclamation of Blockade against Southern ports. For the duration of the war the blockade limits the ability of the rural South to stay well supplied in its war against the industrialized North.
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President Lincoln is struck with grief as his beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, dies from fever, probably caused by polluted drinking water in the White House.
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Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which declares that slaves in the seceded states are now free.
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Residents of the western counties of Virginia did not wish to secede along with the rest of the state. This section of Virginia was admitted into the Union as the state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863.
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Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery throughout the United States.
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Lincoln is inaugurated as President for a second term.
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Lincoln dies, and Andrew Johnson is inaugurated as President.
