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Abraham Lincoln is elected the first Republican, receiving 180 of 303 possible electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote.
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Followed within two months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.
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Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, is elected as president.
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He goes to Richmond, Virginia, is offered command of the military and naval forces of Virginia, and accepts.
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he bloodiest day in U.S. military history as 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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Freeing slaves by President Lincoln.
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Video on Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation President Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in territories held by Confederates 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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The president meets with abolitionist Frederick Douglass who pushes for full equality for Union 'Negro troops.'
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Gettysburg Address President Lincoln delivers a two minute Gettysburg Address at a ceremony dedicating the Battlefield as a National Cemetery.
