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A historical overview of the origins of the Republican party, formed in 1856 to expand federal authority in order to oppose slavery and polygamy. -
It became law on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote. -
On November 6, 1860, voters in the United States went to the polls in an election that ended with Abraham Lincoln as President, in an act that led to the Civil War. But Lincoln’s victory didn’t happen on that day, and his victory wasn’t assured for months. -
Within a few days, the two United States Senators from South Carolina submitted their resignations. On December 20, 1860, by a vote of 169-0, the South Carolina legislature enacted an "ordinance" that "the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." -
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia. It ended with the surrender by the United States Army, beginning the American Civil War. -
On April 27, 1861, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia 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. -
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Manassas, marked the first major land battle of the American Civil War. On July 21, 1861, Union and Confederate armies clashed near Manassas Junction, Virginia. -
On Nov 6, 1861, Jefferson Davis is elected as chairman of the Accomplice States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the fact the decision that had been composed by the Accomplice Congress earlier in the year. -
The Battle of Hampton Roads, also referred to as the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack or the Battle of Ironclads, was a naval battle during the American Civil War. -
The Battle of Shiloh was an early battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. -
Originally called the Confederate Army of the Potomac, the confederate forces were renamed the Army of Northern Virginia when Robert E. Lee assumed command on June 1, 1862, in a battle to defend the city of Richmond from Union forces. -
Antietam, the deadliest one-day battle in American military history, showed that the Union could stand against the Confederate army in the Eastern theater. -
The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. -
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, 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." -
The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the American Civil War, and the principal engagement of the Chancellorsville campaign. It was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville -
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. -
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. -
The New York City draft riots, sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan -
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the close of ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Honoring a request to offer a few remarks, Lincoln memorialized the Union dead and highlighted the redemptive power of their sacrifice. -
On August 28, 1864, Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman lays siege to Atlanta, Georgia, a critical Confederate hub, shelling civilians and cutting off supply lines. -
Near the end of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. -
Union General Sherman's scorched-earth March to the Sea campaign begins. On November 15, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman begins his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines. -
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. -
On March 3, 1865, Congress passed “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees” to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans. -
When Lincoln gave that address on March 4, 1861, seven southern states had already seceded from the nation, and civil war was imminent. Now, after four years of a terrible national crisis, Lincoln uses his Second Inaugural to gently, but clearly, call out slavery as the reason for the war. -
On the morning of Sunday April 2, 1865 Confederate lines near Petersburg broke after a nine month seige. The retreat of the army left the Confederate capital of Richmond, 25 miles to the north, defenseless. -
Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate government moved the capital to Richmond, the South's second largest city. The move served to solidify the state of Virginia's new Confederate identity and to sanctify the rebellion by associating it with the American Revolution. -
It's one of the most momentous events in American history: Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, which effectively ended the Civil War, although other southern forces would still be surrendering into May. -
On the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. -
John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.