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Uncle Tom's Cabin is published
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war. -
Republican party is formed
The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party -
Kansas-Nebraska Act passed
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford desicion is rendered
Among constitutional scholars, 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
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery -
John Brown is hanged
In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown is executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection -
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
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted, 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
When President Abraham Lincoln announced plans to resupply the fort, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. After a 34-hour exchange of artillery fire, Anderson and 86 soldiers surrendered the fort on April 13 -
Richmond becomes the capital of the Confederacy
There is no permanent location in Montgomery—and should Virginia. … become the theatre of the war, the whole [government] may be transferred here.” -
Richmond fails to the Union Army
On May 20 [1861], the Confederate Congress voted to move the government to Richmond...With that, Virginia's capital had become the very symbol of the Confederacy, and the ultimate prize in a bloody war. -
Lincoln suspends habeas corpus
When Congress was called into special session, July 4, 1861, 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
The First Battle of Bull Run also known as the First Battle of Manassas (the name used by Confederate forces), was fought on July 21, 1861 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 Conferderacy
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 as the first permanent President and Vice President of the Confederacy -
The Merrimac and the Moniter fight of the Virginia coast
Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, also called Battle of Hampton Roads, 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
The Battle of Shiloh was a battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. -
Robert E. Lee is named commander of the army of northern Virginia
Robert E. Lee (1807-70) served as a military officer in the U.S. Army, a West Point commandant and the legendary general of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (1861-65). In June 1861, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also called the Battle of Sharpsburg at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It pitted Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia against Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and was the culmination of Lee’s attempt to invade the north -
Battle of Fredricksburg
The Battle of Fredericksburg, involved nearly 200,000 combatants, the largest concentration of troops in any Civil War battle. Ambrose Burnside, had ordered his more than 120,000 troops to cross the Rappahannock River, where they made a two-pronged attack on the right and left flanks of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Fredericksburg. -
Emancipation Proclamation is announced
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
Battle of Chancellorsville
Battle Of Chancellorsville Summary: The Battle of Chancellorsville, April 30–May 6, 1863, 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 -
Battle of Gettysburg
After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania. On July 1, the advancing Confederates clashed with the Union’s Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George G. Meade, at the crossroads town of Gettysburg -
Confederates surrender at Vicksburg
The Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Vicksburg campaign was one of the Union's most successful of the war. ... After defeating a Confederate force near Jackson, Grant turned back to Vicksburg -
New York City draft riots
The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), 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 War -
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 passes the 13th amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865 -
Atlanta is captured
Continuing their summer campaign to seize the important rail and supply center of Atlanta, Union forces commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman -
Abraham Lincoln defeats George Mclellan to win re-election
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. Lincoln's re-election ensured that he would preside over the successful conclusion of the Civil War -
Sherman begins his March to the Sea
From November 15 until December 21, 1864, 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 is created
an agency of the United States Department of War to "direct such issues of provisions -
Lincoln gives his second inaugural address
Lincoln taking the oath at his second inauguration, March 4, 1865. 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. -
Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox
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. -
President Lincoln assasinated
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C -
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. Twenty-six-year-old 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
