African American Soldiers in the Civil War

By Laurenpurcell

  • Abraham Lincoln is elected president

  • Period: to

    African American Soldiers in the Civil War

  • South Carolina is the first of eleven states to secede from the Union

  • Confederate States of America is formed

  • The Civil War begins

  • Confederacy wins the First Battle of Bull Run

  • Congress rules that black Americans can now enlist in Union Army

  • The War Department organizes 5,000 black volunteers to fight in the Union army

  • Louisiana Native Guards becomes first all-black regiment to formally join Union army

  • Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation

  • Black soldiers are ruthlessly shot down by Confederates at Fort Pillow, Tennessee

  • Congress grants equal pay for black soldiers

  • Black soldiers fight heroically at Battle of New Market Heights, Virginia. Fourteen earn Medal of Honor.

  • About 600 black soldiers of the Fifth and Sixth U.S. Colored Cavalry attack the salt furnaces at Saltville, Virginia

  • Confederacy issues law to use slaves as soldiers

  • Confederate general Robert E Lee. surrenders to Union general Ulysses S. Grant

  • Lincoln dies after being shot; Andrew Johnson becomes president

  • The last battle of the Civil War is fought at Palmetto Ranch, Texas

  • The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery in the United States