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Period: to
The Length of the Civil War
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Election of 1860
The election of 1860 pitted Abraham Lincon against Steven Douglas in a territorial battle for the north. Lincon won decisively, receiving 182 electoral votes to the 108 of the three other presidential candidates.Lincon alienated himself with the southern, slaveholding states because of his stand that slavery should not expand to the western states. The slave states hated Lincon somuch that, upon his election, the slaves states ceceded from the union, landing the US in a great Civil War. -
Jefferson Davis
On February 18, 1861, after he resigned from the U.S. Senate, Davis was selected provisional President of the Confederate States of America. During his presidency, Davis took charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to stop the more powerful Union. Davis was a much less effective war leader than his Union counterpart Abraham Lincoln.During the war, the south's infrastructure of trains and telegraphs didn't progress, inflation ran wild, and the southern economy died. -
Fort Sumter
With the election of Abraham Lincon to the presedential office, southern states went into open revolt. the first action took place at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincon, instead of sending troops down to the beliguered fort, sent provisions, forcing the south to take the first military action. Fort Sumter was the spark, setting off the fire of the Civil War. -
Scott's Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan is the name widely applied to an outline strategy for subduing the seceding states in the American Civil War. Proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized the blockade of the Southern ports, and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by the vociferous faction who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and who likened it to the coils of an anaconda. -
Battle of Bull Run
The Battle of Bull Run (in the South known as the Battle of Manassas) was the first major land battle of the American Civil War. unseasoned Union Army troops under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell squared off against the equally unseasoned Confederate Army under Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, each withe the optimistic view that the war would be over in a month or two. However, the confederate troops held their ground against the superior numbers of the North, then decicively whiped the Union army. -
Thomas Stonewall Jackson
After the battle of Bull Run, Jackson earned the nickname Stonewall for maintaining his troops position against much greater numbers in the Union Army. At that time, he was a relitively unknown colonel, but by his death in May 10, 1863, was arguablely the greatest general in the South. His military career includes the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and his service as a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. -
George Brinton McClellan
George McClellan was a major general during the American Civil War. He organized the famous Army of the Potomac and served briefly (November 1861 to March 1862) as the general-in-chief of the Union Army. Early in the war, McClellan played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army for the Union. however, his meticulous aproach to battle led to multiple defeatsat the hand of the more aggresive confederate army led by Lee. -
Robert E. Lee
Lee soon emerged as the shrewdest battlefield tactician of the war, after he assumed command of the Confederate eastern army (soon christened "The Army of Northern Virginia"). His abilities as a tactician were made evident in his many victories such as the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862), Battle of Chancellorsville (1863), Battle of the Wilderness (1864) Battle of Cold Harbor (1864), Seven Days Battles, and the Second Battle of Bull Run. After the war, Lee became an icon for the South. -
Monitor vs Merrimack
The battle between the Merrimack and the Monitor at Hapmton roads, was the first battle between two ironclad ships in the history of warfare. In an effort to break the union barracade on Hampton Roads, the Confederates sent out the CSS Virginia, previously USS Merrimack, a steamship clad in metal, to take on the wooden ships of the Union. After sinking two on the first day, the Merrimack was met by the Union ship USS Monitor. Their engagement lasted three hours, without a decicive outcome. -
Battle of Antietam
On September 16, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan confronted Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland. At dawn September 17, Hooker’s corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee that began the single bloodiest day in American military history. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill. Lee couldn't gain an advantage and was forced to retreat. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War under his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation changed the view and tide of the war. Not only was it a war to save the Union, but also a war to free the slaves. Many of the freed slaves could now fight for the Union. -
Battle of Fredricksburg
The Battle of Fredricksburg was a lopsided affair between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. The Union army's futile frontal assaults on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North. Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle. -
Battle of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Gen.Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. After two futile attempts, Grant besieged Vicksburg until it capitulated on July 4, 1863. This Victory secured control of the Mississippi for the Union, splitting the South in two. -
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations at the Gettysburg Memorial, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation. -
Ulysses S. Grant
was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America. Grant, after commanding in tenessee and capturing Vicksburg, was promoted to commander of the potomac army. As commander, he wore down confederate resistance, effectively ending the war when he forced unconditional surrender from Lee. -
Sherman's March to the Sea
The Savannah Campaign was conducted around Georgia during November-December 1864 by William Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War. The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. It inflicted significant damage, to industry and infrastructure ( total war), and also to civilian property. Sherman destroyed much of the South's potential and psychology to wage war. -
Appomattox Court House
The signing of the surrender documents of the Army of Virginia occurred in the parlor of the house owned by Wilmer McLean on the afternoon of April 9. On April 12, a formal ceremony marked the disbandment of the Army of Northern Virginia and the parole of its officers and men, effectively ending the war in Virginia. Grant and Lee met to discuss terms of surrender, and when the other armies of the South recieved the news, gradually laid down their arms. -
Lincoln’s Assassination
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was carried out on Good Friday, April 14, 1865. President Lincoln died from the gunshot wound the following morning. Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The American Civil War was drawing to a close, just six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee to Union General U. S. Grant. The assassination was planned and carried out by John Wilkes Booth who was then caught and executed. -
The Battle of Palmito Ranch
the Battle of Palmito Ranch, was fought on May 12 – May 13, 1865, during the American Civil War. It was the last major clash of arms in the war. The battle was fought on the banks of the Rio Grande about twelve miles east of Brownsville, Texas. In the kaleidoscope of events following the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army on April 9, Palmito Ranch was nearly ignored.
