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Civil War Timeline
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Abraham Lincoln elected president
Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois. -
Battle at Fort Sumter
On April 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort, which was unable to reply effectively. At 2:30 pm, April 13, Major Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter, evacuating the garrison on the following day. The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War. Although there were no casualties during the bombardment, one Union artillerist was killed and three wounded (one mortally) when a cannon exploded prematurely while firing -
Lincoln orders blockade of the south
The Union blockade took place during the American Civil War, when the Union Navy maintained a strenuous effort on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast of the Confederate States of America designed to prevent the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms to and from the Confederacy. Ships that tried to evade the blockade, known as blockade runners, were mostly newly built, high-speed ships with small cargo capacity. They were operated by the British (using Royal Navy officers on leave). -
First Battle of Bull Run
It was the first major battle of the Civil War. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run beyond Centreville. The Confederate victory meant the war would not end quickly.It was clear that it would now be a long term, large scale struggle. -
Monitor vs. Virginia naval battle
The C.S.S. Virginia was originally the U.S.S. Merrimack, a 40-gun frigate launched in 1855. The Confederates captured it and covered it in heavy armor plating above the waterline. Outfitted with powerful guns, the Virginia was a formidable vessel when the Confederates launched her in February 1862. On March 8, the Virginia sunk two Union ships and ran one aground off Hampton Roads. -
Battle of Shiloh
On the morning of April 6, 1862, 40,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston poured out of the nearby woods and struck a line of Union soldiers occupying ground near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. The overpowering Confederate offensive drove the unprepared Federal forces from their camps and threatened to overwhelm Ulysses S. Grant’s entire command. Some Federals made determined stands and by afternoon, they had established a battle line. -
7 Days Campaign (7 Day Battle)
The battle was to rid the Richmond area of a large union force, threatening from the peninisula near the confluence of the James and York rivers. The battles were intense, bloody affairs, with neither side gaining much of an advantage. Finally, at Malvern Hill, the union forces threw back a series of confederate assaults, and McClellan was able to withdraw his forces to safety. -
2nd Battle of Bull Run
The Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) proved to be the deciding battle in the Civil War campaign waged between Union and Confederate armies in northern Virginia in 1862. As a large Union force commanded by John Pope waited for George McClellan's Army of the Potomac in anticipation of a combined offensive, Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to strike first. Lee sent half of his Army of Northern Virginia to hit the Federal supply base at Manassas. Led by Stonewall Jackson. -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, fought on Wednesday, September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with 22,717 dead, wounded and missing on both sides combined.[4] -
Emancipation Proclamation issued
President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War, announcing on September 22, 1862, that if the rebels did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states would be free. -
Emancipation Proclamation takes effect
President Abraham Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation was issued in September 1862, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The act signaled an important shift in the Union's Civil War aims, expanding the goal of the war from reunification to include the eradication of slavery. -
Battle at Chancellorsville
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s well-executed crossing of the Rappahannock fords on April 30, 1863 placed his rejuvenated and reorganized Army of the Potomac on Lee’s vulnerable flank. Rather than retreat before this sizable Federal force, Lee opted to attack Hooker while he was still within the thick wilderness. Late on May 1, 1863, Lee and Jackson conceived one of the boldest plans of the war. Jackson, with 30,000 Confederates, would follow a circuitous route to the Union right. -
Battle of Gettysburg
It was a major turning point in the war. Until that battle, the South was actually winning. But the North succeeded in cutting off the South's supply lines and ended victoriously...although barely...at Gettysburg, which was the start of the South's loss of the war. -
Siege of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. When two major assaults (May 19 and May 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties. -
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, one of the best-known in American history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. -
Battle at Chattanooga
On November 23-24, Union forces struck out and captured Orchard Knob and Lookout Mountain. On November 25, Union soldiers assaulted and carried the seemingly impregnable Confederate position on Missionary Ridge. One of the Confederacy’s two major armies was routed. The Federals held Chattanooga, the “Gateway to the Lower South,” which became the supply and logistics base for Sherman’s 1864 Atlanta Campaign. -
Abraham Lincoln shot and killed
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
Ulysses S. Grant takes over the Union Army
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). -
Sherman captured Atlanta
Unwilling to attack Atlanta's strong defenses, U.S. forces swept west and south around the city. At Jonesboro they cut the last railroad supplying Atlanta, forcing General John Bell Hood's Confederates to abandon the city. Atlantans who remained were rudely awakened that morning by the apocalyptic explosions of Hood's ammunition train being blown up by Confederates. -
Abraham Lincoln was re-elected
In the United States Presidential election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected as president. Lincoln ran under the National Union banner against his former top Civil War general, the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan. McClellan was the "peace candidate" but did not personally believe in his party's platform. -
Sherman begins march to the sea
Union General William T. Sherman begins his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines. For the next six weeks, Sherman's army destroyed most of the state before capturing the Confederate seaport of Savannah, Georgia. Sherman captured Atlanta in early September 1864 after a long summer campaign. He recognized his vulnerability in the city, however, as his supply lines stretched all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. -
13th Amendment passed
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. -
Robert E. Lee surrenders
At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
