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Republican Party is formed
Republican Party was founded on March 30, 1854 -
Kansas-Nebraska Act passed
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising. -
Abraham Lincoln elected president
Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th president of the United. -
South Carolina votes to secede from the United States
South Carolina became the first state to secede from the federal Union. -
Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War. -
Lincoln suspends habeas corpus
It was to give military authorities the necessary power to silence dissenters and rebels. Under this order, commanders could arrest and detain individuals who were deemed threatening to military operations. -
First Battle of Bull Run is fought
Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 30 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. -
Jefferson Davis elected president of the Confederacy
Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederate States of America and was elected to a six-year term. -
The Merrimac and the Monitor fight of the Virginia coast
American Civil War, naval engagement at Hampton Roads, Virginia, a harbor 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
It was an early battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. -
Robert E. Lee is named commander of the Army of Northern Virginia
The Confederate Army of the Potomac, the confederate forces were renamed the Army of Northern Virginia when Robert E. Lee assumed command in a battle to defend the city of Richmond from Union forces. -
Battle of Antietam
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. The battle’s outcome would be vital to shaping America’s future, and it remains the deadliest one-day battle in all of American military history. -
Battle of Fredericksburg
It is the largest concentration of troops in any Civil War battle. -
Emancipation Proclamation is announced
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. -
Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox
Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
Battle of Chancellorsville
This was a huge victory for the Confederacy and General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, though it is also famous for being the battle in which Confederate General Jackson was mortally wounded. -
Battle of Gettysburg
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. -
Confederates surrender at Vicksburg
The Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant -
New York City draft riots
The anger of working-class New Yorkers over a new federal draft law during the Civil War sparked five days of some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting in U.S. history. -
Lincoln gives his Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the end of the ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg Pennsylvania. The speech has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address. -
Abraham Lincoln defeats George McClellan to win re-election
Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212 to 21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. -
Atlanta is Captured
Union forces commanded by William T. Sherman, wanting to keep the important rail and supply hub so he defeated Confederate forces defending the city under John B. Hood. -
Sherman begins his March to the Sea
General William T. Sherman began his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines. -
Freedman’s Bureau is created
It was an act that established a Bureau of relief of freed slaves and refugees to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans. -
Lincoln gives his second inaugural address
Lincoln spoke of mutual forgiveness, North and South, asserting that the true mettle of a nation lies in its capacity for charity. Lincoln presided over the nation's most terrible crisis. -
Richmond becomes the capital of the Confederacy
The Confederate government moved the capital to Richmond, the South's second-largest city. -
Richmond falls to the Union Army
The retreating Confederates chose to burn military supplies rather than let them fall into Union hands this resulted in a fire destroyed much of central Richmond. -
President Lincoln was Assassinated
ohn Wilkes Booth became the first person to assassinate an American president when he shot and killed Abraham Lincoln in his box at Ford's Theater in Washington. -
John Wilkes Booth is killed
John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. -
Congress passes the 13th Amendment
This amendment abolished slavery.
