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Civil War
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Lincoln delivered his famous speech at Cooper Union, explaining his position on slavery and wowing New Yorkers who were not so familiar with the Republican candidate from the Midwest.
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This gave squatters the right to buy westward land at a very cheap price.
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Mail between Sacramento, California and St. Joseph's, Missouri is carried over the Oregon Trail by a series of riders on horseback. Service no longer needed when the transcontinental telegraph is invented.
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The democratic convention in Charleston SC divided over slavery
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Thomas Jonathan Jackson is assigned to command Harpers Ferry, the target of an assault by an armed group of abolitionists
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The republican convention selects Abraham Lincoln as candidate
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The republican convention selects Abraham Lincoln as candidate
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South Carolina secedes from the Union. Paves the road for other states to follow.
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Major Robert Anderson gathers his small army at Fort Sumter
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Harriet Tubman arrives in Auburn New York, on her last mission to free slaves, having evaded capture for 8 years on the Underground Railroad
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Abraham Lincoln officially becomes the 16th President of the United States of America
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West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, as president.
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With 50 cannons upon Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Calling for 75,000 militiamen.Summoning a special session of Congress for July 4.
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A proclamation of Blockade against Southern ports. During the war the blockade limits the ability of the South to stay well supplied in its war against the industrialized North.
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Union troops fall back to Washington. President Lincoln realizes the war will be long.
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Replacing McDowell.
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Later relieves Gen. Frémont of his command and replaces him with Gen. David Hunter.
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After the resignation of the aged Winfield Scott.
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two Confederate officials sailing toward England are seized by the U.S. Navy. England, the leading world power, demands their release, threatening war.
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Probably caused by polluted drinking water in the White House.
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Capturing Fort Henry, and ten days later Fort Donelson. Grant earns the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
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Union ships then battle the Union Ironclad 'Monitor' to a draw. Naval warfare is changed forever, making wooden ships obsolete.
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With 13,000 Union killed and wounded at Shiloh on the Tennessee River
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And take New Orleans. The South's greatest seaport.
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Nearly defeats them. But Johnston is badly wounded.
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Federals under Gen. John Pope. Confederates under Gen. Stonewall Jackson
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Located 50 miles northwest of Washington.
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The bloodiest day in U.S. military history. Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Armies are stopped at Antietam in Maryland by McClellan and numerically superior Union forces. By nightfall 26,000 men are dead, wounded, or missing. Lee then withdraws to Virginia.
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In Virginia with a loss of 12,653 men after 14 frontal assaults
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And emphasizes the enlisting of black soldiers in the Union Army. The war to preserve the Union now becomes a revolutionary struggle for the abolition of slavery.
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With orders to capture Vicksburg.
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Hooker is decisively defeated by Lee's much smaller forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia as a result of Lee's brilliant and daring tactics.
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His last words "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."
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Going to Pennsylvania in a campaign that will soon lead to Gettysburg.
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In Pennsylvania. Confederates are defeated
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To Gen. Grant and the Army of the West after a six week siege.
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Meets with abolitionist Frederick Douglass
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At Lawrence, Kansas
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At a ceremony dedicating the Battlefield as a National Cemetery.
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Lincoln appoints Ulysses S. Grant commander of all Union armies, ending his long search for a decent general to command northern forces
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Ulysses S. Grant and 120,000 troops march south towards Richmond, the Confederate capital. Over the course of the next six weeks nearly 50,000 Union soldiers die.
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During the horrific Battle of the Wilderness, thousands of men burn to death as the woods in which they were fighting catch fire.
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Grant attacks Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces at Spotsylvania. Grant loses more soldiers than Lee. Still, General Lee is forced to retreat south.
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The Battle of Cold Harbor is a disaster for the union. Grant makes a series of mistakes that leads to the death of 7,000 soldier in 20 minutes
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The Siege of Petersburg ended the previous mobile war and began a 9-moth siege
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Troop train loaded with Confederate prisoners collided with a coal train killing 65 & injuring 109 of 955 aboard
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President Lincoln request 500,000 volunteers to help fight the war
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Union Admiral David Farragut led his troops through the Confederate defenses at Mobile, Alabama, to seal one of the last major Southern ports.
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Union General William T. Sherman captures and burns Atlanta during US Civil War
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The United States Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which will abolish slavery.
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General Robert E. Lee named Commander-in-Chief of Confederate Armies during US Civil War
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Columbia, South Carolina burns down during the Civil War
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Lincoln is sworn in for his second term as President of the United States.
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The Union Army captures Richmond, Virginia, which is nearly leveled by shelling and fire.
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The Siege of Petersburg ends as Ulysses S. Grant's army breaks through Confederate lines and marches towards Richmond.
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Lincoln gets shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington
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Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers, most of them Union POWs on their way home
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The 13th Amendment is ratified by the United States. Outlawing slavery in its entirety
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In Pulaski, Tennessee, a group of Confederate veterans convenes to form a secret society that they christen the Ku Klux Klan.
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The last issue of the Liberator (an abolitionist new paper) is published. The newspaper has now becomes unnecessary because the slaves have been freed.
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Beginning with an altercation between white policemen and black Union soldiers, everything erupts into violence. Black neighborhoods are ravaged as white civilians and police alike look for vengeance. Federal troops are able to end fighting on May 3rd.
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Winfield Scott dies at West Point.
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"All persons born or naturalized in the United States [regardless of color]...are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
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Following the Civil War Tennessee becomes the first state readmitted to the Union.
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Congress passes the legislation making General of the Army a rank. Ulysses S. Grant is the first to hold that title.
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Starting with African Americans protesting outside a Louisiana Conventional Convention for better voting rights ended in a race riot. The conflict was started when Mayor Monroe organized a group of ex-Confederate soldiers to attack the protestors.
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Andrew Johnson wrote and signed this document after fighting in Texas had ceased. It assured the American public that civil order had been restored to America and that the United States was whole again.
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Frederick Douglass becomes the first black delegate at a convention. His personal narrative also exposed Americans to the brutal practices of slavery.
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The Republican Party wins in a landslide. This will make President Johnson's job harder as Congress is mostly composed of Radical Republicans who are at odds with the president regarding Reconstruction in the South.
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In Washington D.C., Congress allows African American men to vote despite the veto from President Johnson.
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Started by George Peabody, the purpose of the fund was to provide education to the poorest regions of the South. It's reasoning for being started was largely the destruction that had been caused during the Civil War and would only benefit white children.
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United States Congress creates the Department of Education in order to collect information and statistics from schools.
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This act would aim to keep Southern states under control. The purpose of the first act was to split the ten Southern states into five military districts.
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Expanding on the first, it placed military commanders to act as governors over the five districts. It also required that office holders in the South had to recite an oath as well as changes to voting. This was meant to make it harder for ex-Confederates to have less of an impact in the government.
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Congress approves the building of the Lincoln Memorial, which honors the significant president
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In a deal that was stalled by the Civil War, the U.S. buys Alaska from Russia for the price of $7,200,000 or 2 cents per acre.
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Giving supreme control to the five Union generals in control of the districts.These generals were given ultimate power as they could remove any officiafrom office if they were thought to have been hampering with the process of Reconstruction. These acts will push Southern citizens over the edge who will result to violence through the Ku Klux Klan.
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With the help of Congress the first all African American college is created in Washington D.C. named Howard U.
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President Johnson suspends Secretary of War Edward Stanton regarding policies about Reconstruction in the South.
