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Florida secedes from the Union with a vote of 62-7.
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The battle at Fort Sumter occurs leading 4 more states to secede from the Union.
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Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation - freeing all slaves still held in states in rebellion.
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Turning point in the Civil War, last time the South invades the North, Union victory.
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The Freedmen's Bureau is created, the goal is to aid African Americans with their new found freeedom. It was most successful in the area of education.
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The Confederacy led by General Robert E. Lee surrenders, ending the Civil War.
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Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford's Theater.
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Slavery is abolished.
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Johnson is impeached as a result of breaking the Tenure of Office Act. He won the trial by one vote and remained in office.
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Amendment granted citizenship and equal protection to all people born in the United States, making former slaves citizens.
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Amendment is ratfied which prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
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Hiram Revels is elected to the Senate to represent Mississippi, becoming the first African American to serve in the US Senate.
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Tweed, the leader of Tammany Hall, which controlled Demoratic politics in New York is exposed by Thomas Nast for embezzling government funds.
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A fire breaks out killing hundreds and destroying about 3.3 square miles in Chicago, Illinois.
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A railroad construction company is exposed in participating in bribes of Congressmen.
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Congress votes to give itself a large raise and to make it retroactive. The law is eventually repealed.
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A financialcrisis grips the nation after years of inflation and speculation.
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A scandal involving diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors.
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Lt. Colonel George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry are defeated by the Sioux resulting in the deaths of 268 Americans.
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The Compromise of 1877 is passed - Republican Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president and promises to remove federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
