1860-1865

  • Period: to

    Civil War

  • Southern states secession dates

    South Carolina December 20, 1860
    Mississippi January 9, 1861
    Florida January 10, 1861
    Alabama January 11, 1861
    Georgia January 19, 1861
    Louisiana January 26, 1861
    Texas February 1, 1861
    Virginia April 17, 1861
    Arkansas May 6, 1861
    North Carolina May 20, 1861
    Tennessee June 8, 1861
  • Fort Sumter

    A fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, that was the scene of a bombardment from April 12 to 14, 1861, the opening engagement of the Civil War. There was a Union garrison at the fort under Maj. Robert Anderson, who refused to surrender the fort and was subsequently attacked by Confederates under Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, whose attack forced an evacuation and surrender.
  • Bull Run

    A small stream of northeast Virginia southwest of Washington, D.C., near Manassas. It was the site of two important Civil War battles (July 21, 1861, and August 29-30, 1862), both Confederate victories. They are also known as the Battles of Manassas.
  • Monitor and Merrimack battle

    At the moment when the Confederates evacuated Manassas a strange naval battle occurred in Hampton Roads. The Confederates had raised the sunken Merrimac in the Gosport navy yard and converted it into an iron-clad ram, which they called the Virginia, commanded by Captain Buchanan, late of the United States navy.
  • Shilon

    a national park in SW Tennessee: civil war battle 1862.
  • Antietam

    A creek of north-central Maryland emptying into the Potomac River. The bloody and inconclusive Civil War Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as it is often called in the South) was fought along its banks on September 17, 1862.
  • Fredericksburg

    (Dec. 13, 1862) Engagement of the American Civil War fought at Fredericksburg, Va., that resulted in a decisive victory for the Confederate forces. Over 120,000 Union troops under Ambrose E. Burnside were met at Fredericksburg by an entrenched Confederate force of 78,000 under Robert E. Lee. The Union attack failed, resulting in more than 12,500 casualties compared to 5,000 for the Confederates. Burnside was relieved of his command, and the victory restored Confederate morale lost after the defe
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    was supposed to abolish slavery; however, it only ended slavery on the states that were rebeling
  • Chancellorville

    The Chancellorsville campaign began with the crossing of the Rappahannock River by the Union (United States) army on the morning of April 27, 1863. Heavy fighting began on May 1 and did not end until the Union forces retreated across the river on the night of May 5–6.
  • Stonewall Jackson killed

    "stonewall" jackson dies on his horse because he slept on it, and one of his boarder patrol didn't see him, he only heard his horse and the boarder patrol man shot, and killed him
  • Vicksburg

    A city of western Mississippi on bluffs above the Mississippi River west of Jackson. During the Civil War it was besieged from 1862 to 1863 and finally captured by troops led by Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863. Population: 25,700.
  • West Virginia becomes a state

    In 1863, West Virginia became 35th state admitted to the Union when it broke away from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the western portion was against the action. On October 24, 1861, what would later become West Viginia was formed. The US government accepted West Virginia as a state two years later. Interestingly, West Virginia was initially going to be called Kanawha after the Kanawha River.
  • Battle of Gettysburg

  • Battle of Little Round Top

    In June 1863, Confederate military fortunes in the East were at their zenith. The Union Army of the Potomac had just been defeated at the Battle of Chancellorsville; flushed with victory, the Army of Northern Virginia began an invasion of the North. It seemed that one more decisive victory, this time on the soil of a Northern state, might crush the already sagging will of the North and force Abraham Lincoln's government to the bargaining table, where a negotiated peace could win the war for the
  • Gettysburg address

    During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln makes a public address in which he dedicates a cemetery for soldiers that lost their lives in a pivotal conflict of the war
  • U.S. Grant takes command

    After the American Civil War began in April 1861, he joined the Union war effort, taking charge of training new regiments and then engaging the Confederacy near Cairo, Illinois. In 1862, he fought a series of major battles and captured a Confederate army, earning a reputation as an aggressive general who seized control of most of Kentucky and Tennessee at the Battle of Shiloh. In July 1863, after a long, complex campaign, he defeated five Confederate armies (capturing one of them) and seized Vic
  • Sherman's march to the sea

    After capturing Atlanta in September 1864, a victory that guaranteed the reelection of Abraham Lincoln and the continuation of the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Union commander in the west, turned his thoughts to the most direct assault he could imagine on the heart of the Confederacy, one that targeted Southern morale. Despite some misgivings on the part of Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, the overall Union commander and Sherman's closest friend, Sherman decided to send a blocking forc
  • Lincoln gets re-elected

    shermans march re-elects lincoln
  • Sherman's march to the sea

  • Lincoln election

    The 1864 election occurred during the Civil War; though only votes in the Union states counted, elections were held in Louisiana and Tennessee, with Lincoln carrying both.
  • Surrender at Appomatox Courthouse

    With his army surrounded, his men weak and exhausted, Robert E. Lee realized there was little choice but to consider the surrender of his Army to General Grant. After a series of notes between the two leaders, they agreed to meet on April 9, 1865, at the house of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Courthouse. The meeting lasted approximately two and one-half hours and at its conclusion the bloodliest conflict in the nation's history neared its end.
  • Lincoln assasination

    shot in the head by John Wilks Booth, while watching a play
  • 13th amendment

    ended all slavery