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Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency.
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The spark occurred at Fort Sumter, a federal outpost in Charleston, South Carolina, that was attacked by Confederates troops, beginning the Civil War.
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This was the first major land battle of the armies in Virginia.
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It was the second battle fought there, although it was a much larger battle than the first one. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, led by Robert E. Lee, defeated the Union's Major General John Pope and his Army of Virginia.
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The Army of Potomac, under the command of George McClellan, mounted a series of powerful assaults against Robert E. Lee's forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
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The advancing Confederates clashed with the Union's Army of Potomac, commanded by George G. Meade, at the crossroads town of Gettysburg
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President Abraham Lincoln was invited to deliver remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address.
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Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered his beleaguered Confederate forces to Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army.
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John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer , fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a party at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.
