-
On this day Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican and believed that the government couldn't have half free states and half slave states.
-
Jefferson Davis was a former U.S. Army officer. The Confederates elected him as president.
-
The Confederates shot 50 cannons at Forth Sumter in South Carolina. This marked that the Civil War had begun.
-
President Lincoln issued a blockade against Southern ports. This blockade limited the supplies to the South against the industrialized North.
-
General Grant had victory in capturing Fort Henry and ten days later he also captured Fort Donelson.
-
The Merrimac, a Confederate Ironclad, battled two Union ships and then battled the Union Ironclad.
-
The Confederates had a surprise attack on the Union at Shiloh. There was 13,000 Union killed and wounded and 10,000 Confederates.
-
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln freeing enslaved people in those parts of the Confederacy still in rebellion.
-
The U.S Congress starts a draft. They are drafting men from 20 to 45, but the men who pay $300 or get a substitute don't have to go to war.
-
The war turns against the South when they are defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle lasted from July first to the third. It is considered the most important engagement of the Civil War.
-
President Lincoln gave a speech saying that the Gettysburg battlefield is now a National Cemetery.
-
The congress approves the amendment to abolish slavery. The amendment is then sent off for the states to ratify.
-
The rest of the Confederates surrender and the North and South are reunited as one.
