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During his inauguration the new president said he would not attemp to end slavery in the states where it existed, but he said he wouldn't allow secession. He didn't want to resolve the national crisis with warfare. "Secession" meaning the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, esp. a political state: "secession from the union".
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On April 12, the Civil War began with shots fired on the Fort Sumter and was eventually surrendered to South Carolina.
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President Lincoln issued a war order authorizing the Union to launch an aggressive action torwards the Conferderacy. General McClellan ignored his war order.
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Confederate forces attacked Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee. Casualties were heavy, 13,000 out of 63,000 Union soldiers died, and 11,000 of 40,000 Confederate troops were killed.
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Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion were, in the eyes of the federal government, free.
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Grant began a siege of the city. After six weeks, Confederate General John Pemberton surrendered, giving up the city and 30,000 men.
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The Republican party nominated President Abraham Lincoln as its presidential candidate, and Andrew Johnson for vice-president.
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On April 14, as President Lincoln was watching the performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor from Maryland obsessed with avenging the Confederate defeat. Lincoln died the next morning. Booth escaped to Virginia. Eleven days later, cornered in a burning barn, Booth was fatally shot by a Union soldier. Nine other people were involved in the assassination; four were hung, four imprisoned, and one acquitted.
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Remaining Confederate troops were defeated between the end of April and the end of May. Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on May 10.
