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Republican Abraham Lincoln beats southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge to become America's sixteenth president.
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South Carolina becomes the first of eleven states to secede from the Union.
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Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas all secede from the Union and become the founding members of the CSA.
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The Confederate States of America is formed by the original seven states to secede from the Union.
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Jefferson Davis is appointed the President of the Confederate States of America.
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Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the sixteenth president in Washington, D.C.
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Southern troops attack and capture Union garrison Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC, officially starting the Civil War.
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In response to the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to join the effort to put down the Confederate insurrection.
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The first skirmish of the Civil War is fought near Philippi, (West) Virginia and involved 3,000 troops.
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The First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) is the first major engagement to be fought. The Confederates' victory shocked the North and proved that the war would not be a quick affair.
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Ninety-thousand Union forces and forty-thousand Confederate troops led by the successful General Lee fight to a bitter draw. Resulting in over twenty-thousand casualties, this day is the deadliest of the war and marks a turning point as it ends Lee's first campaign into the North, changes the Union armies' leadership, and leads to the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Lincoln signs an executive order, the Emancipation Proclamation, on Sept. 22, 1862 which legally frees all three and a half slaves in the Confederate states. It also makes freeing all slaves the main goal of the Union war effort.
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The deadliest battle of the Civil War is won by the Union and serves as a turning point in the war as it stops Robert E. Lee's invasion into the North.
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Four and a half years after the bloody Battle of Gettysburg, President Lincoln delivers what is arguably the most important speech in American history, in which he defines the war as the biggest test America has faced up to this point.
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Incumbent Abraham Lincoln defeats Democrat George B. McClellan in an electoral college landslide to win the election of 1864.
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After his successful trek from Tennessee to Georgia and victory in the Battle of Atlanta, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman leads a campaign from Atlanta to the port of Savannah, razing everything in his path. This campaign mortally wounds the Confederacy as it destroys their supply lines and transportation.
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After losing the Battle of Appomattox Court House in Virginia, Robert E. Lee meets with Union General Grant to negotiate terms of surrender. Lee formally surrenders and the Army of Northern Virginia is disbanded.
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While the Lincoln's are watching the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, John Wilkes Booth shoots the president, who dies nine hours later.
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Union soldiers capture President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, Georgia.
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Confederate General Kirby Smith and his Army of the Trans-Mississippi surrender to Union General Edward Canby in Shreveport, Louisiana, ending all organized, military Confederate resistance and the war as a whole.
