Civil War

  • Uncle tom's cabin is published

    Uncle tom's cabin is published
    Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman
  • Republican Party Formed

    Republican Party Formed
    The Republican Party, is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution. Founded by anti-slavery activists, economic modernizers, ex National Republicans, ex Free Soilers and Whigs in 1854, the Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern states for most of the period between 1860 and 1932.
  • Kansas Nebraska Act passed

    Kansas Nebraska Act passed
    The Kansas–Nebraska Act of created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and President Franklin Pierce.
  • Dred Scott v. Sandford decision is rendered

    Dred Scott v. Sandford decision is rendered
    Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 put a match to the tinderbox of sectional conflict over the future of slavery and helped shape the subsequent presidential election
  • John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry

    John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry
    John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was an effort by armed abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
  • John brown was hanged

    John brown was hanged
    John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed in and advocated armed insurrection as the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856.
  • Abraham Lincoln elected president

    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.
  • South Carolina votes to secede from the United States

    South Carolina votes to secede from the United States
    The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States.
  • confederate forces fire on fort sumter

    confederate forces fire on fort sumter
    The fort had been the source of tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months. After South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, the state demanded the fort be turned over but Union officials refused. A supply ship, the “Star of the West,” tried to reach Fort Sumter on January 9, but the shore batteries opened fire and drove it away. For both sides, Sumter was a symbol of sovereignty.
  • Lincoln Suspends Habeas corpus

    Lincoln Suspends Habeas corpus
    When Congress was called into special session, President Lincoln issued a message to both houses defending his various actions, including the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that it was both necessary and constitutional for him to have suspended it without Congress.
  • First battle of Bull Run is fought

    First battle of Bull Run is fought
    The First Battle of Bull Run also known as the First Battle of Manassas was in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 25 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C.
  • Jefferson Davis elected president of the confederacy

    Jefferson Davis elected president of the confederacy
    Jefferson Davis, who had been elected President and Alexander H. Stephens, who had been elected Vice President, under the Provisional Confederate States Constitution, were elected to six-year terms (February 22, 1862 – February 22, 1868) as the first permanent President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
  • Richard becomes the capital of confederacy

    Richard becomes the capital of confederacy
    The Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia, in May 1861. On February 22, 1862, Davis was inaugurated as president with a term of six years.
  • the merrimack and the monitor fight of the virginia coast

    the merrimack and the monitor fight of the virginia coast
    Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, was in the American Civil War, naval engagement at Hampton Roads, Virginia, a harbour at the mouth of the James River, notable as history's first duel between ironclad warships and the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.
  • Battle of Shiloh

    Battle of Shiloh
    A battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought in southwestern Tennessee. A Union force known as the Army of the Tennessee had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River, where the Confederate Army of Mississippi launched a surprise attack on Grant's army from its base in Corinth, Mississippi.
  • Battle of Antietam

    Battle of Antietam
    The Battle of Antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, in the Southern United States was between Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army and Union General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac. It was the first field army–level engagement in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil and at present remains the bloodiest day in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing
  • emancipation proclamation announced

    emancipation proclamation announced
    President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the Civil War. 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.
  • Battle of Fredericksburg

    Battle of Fredericksburg
    The Battle of Fredericksburg around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, part of the American Civil War. The Union Army's futile frontal attacks on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city are remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the war, with Union casualties more than three times as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates.
  • Battle of Chancellorsville

    Battle of Chancellorsville
    The Battle of Chancellorsville, resulted in a Confederate victory that stopped an attempted flanking movement by Maj. Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker's Army of the Potomac against the left of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
  • Confederates surrender at vicksburg

    Confederates surrender at vicksburg
    The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. ... Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River; therefore, capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy, the Anaconda Plan.
  • Battle of Gettysburg

    Battle of Gettysburg
    The Battle of Gettysburg is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863
  • New York City draft riots

    New York City draft riots
    The New York City draft riots , known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil
  • Lincoln gives his gettysburg address

    Lincoln gives his gettysburg address
    It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War 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.
  • congress passed the 13th amendment

    congress passed the 13th amendment
    The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress.
  • Atlanta was captured

    Atlanta was captured
    Continuing their summer campaign to seize the important rail and supply center of Atlanta, Union forces commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman overwhelmed and defeated Confederate forces defending the city under John Bell Hood. Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson was killed during the battle.
  • Abraham Lincoln defeats George McClellan to win re-election

    Abraham Lincoln defeats George McClellan to win re-election
    The United States presidential election of 1864, was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864. In the midst of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan
  • Sherman begins his march to the sea

    Sherman begins his march to the sea
    Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia's civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause.
  • Freedman's Bureau was created

    Freedman's Bureau was created
    The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of the United States Department of War to "direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children."
  • Lincoln gives his second inaugural address

    Lincoln gives his second inaugural address
    Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Lincoln taking the oath at his second inauguration, March 4, 1865. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address was during the final days of the Civil War and only a month before he was assassinated.
  • Lincolns gives his second inauguration

    Lincolns gives his second inauguration
    Lincoln taking the oath at his second inauguration, Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address was delivered on March 4, 1865, during the final days of the Civil War and only a month before he was assassinated.
  • richmond falls to the union army

    richmond falls to the union army
    Richmond served as the capital of the Confederate States of America for almost the whole of the American Civil War. Not only was Richmond the seat of political power for the Confederacy, it served as a vital source of munitions, armament, weapons, supplies, and manpower for the Confederate States Army and Confederate States Navy, and as such would have been defended at all costs regardless of its political status.
  • Confederates surrender at Appomattox

    Confederates surrender at Appomattox
    Near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. ... But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end.
  • Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox

    Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox
    Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, 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.
  • President Lincoln assassinated

    President Lincoln assassinated
    the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
  • John Wilkes Booth is Killed

    John Wilkes Booth is Killed
    John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country when he shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.