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A timespan covering the United States Civil War
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Lincoln gives a speech against slavery that makes him popular and a leading candidate in the next election. -
Lincoln visits the most notorius slum in America and spends time with children, further increasing his reputation. -
The Pony Express, a mail service using horses, is created on April 3, 1860. -
Albert Hicks, a pirate convicted of murder, was hanged on present-day Liberty Island, New York. -
Annie Oakley, sharpshooter entertainer, was born in Ohio. -
Abraham Lincoln wins the 1860 election with 1.8 million votes, and is elected President of the United States. -
The first Secession Convention takes place in Columbia, South Carolina. -
The Crittenden Compromise, an unsuccessful series of articles to end the argument of slavery, is introduced by John J. Crittenden. -
In 1860, the state of South Carolina is the first to officially withdraw from the United States of America. -
The 15th President of the United States fires his cabinet. -
Mississippi is the second state to officially secedes from the United States of America. -
Everybody's favorite state secedes from the United States. -
Alabama withdraws from the United States of America. -
Texas officially withdraws from the United States. -
The Confederate States of America is formed, with Jefferson Davis as president. -
Fort Sumter is bombarded by the Confederacy, in Charleston, South Carolina. -
The state of Virginia secedes from the United States. -
North Carolina officially withdraws from the United States. -
Tennesse is the final state to formally withdraw from the United States. -
The First Battle of Bull Run takes place in Manassas, Virginia. This marks the first major battle of the Civil War. -
The loss of Fort Henry allowed Union forces to control the Tennessee River. -
This is where the Union secured control of the Cumberland River, and where Ulysses S. Grant gained his nickname "Unconditional Surrender". -
The first battle of ironclad warships take place between the Confederate Merrimack and the Union Monitor. -
The Union forces are taken by surprise, yet come out victorious. Both sides suffer great losses. -
A fleet of Union gunships under the leadership of David Farragut take the New Orleans port. -
General Joseph Johnston, commander of the Confederate army in Virginia is wounded and replaced by Robert E. Lee who renames his command the "Army of Northern Virginia". -
Lee's army attacks McClellan's in Richmond, Virginia. -
The battle is fought on the same ground as the first Battle of Bull Run, with the same outcome, an Union defeat. -
The bloodiest single-day battle took place at Sharpsburg, Maryland. -
The Army of the Potomac, under General Ambrose Burnside, is defeated by Lee's forces. -
It declared that all slaves in all Confederate states were freed. -
Conscription, or the drafting of soldiers into military service, begins in the North. -
Lee had a great victory, but "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded in this battle. -
Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant attack the town in Mississippi. -
The bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Lee never attempts another assault on Union grounds again. -
The capture of Vicksburg gives the Union complete control of the Mississippi River. -
Union naval and land forces attack Confederate defenses near Charleston, South Carolina. Among the Union troops is the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the first African American regiment of volunteers to see combat. -
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is killed and buried with the dead of his regiment. -
The Union Army under General William Rosecrans is defeated and nearly routed by the Confederate Army commanded by General Braxton Bragg. -
Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches in Gettysburg, PA. -
The CSS H.L. Hunley attacked the USS Houstonic outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Both were lost. -
This prison camp in Georgia becomes notorious for overcrowded conditions and a high death rate among its inmates. -
After a rapid raid through central and western Tennessee, Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked and overwhelmed the Union garrison at Fort Pillow, located on the Mississippi River. -
Lee attacked the Union forces in the dense woods and underbrush of an area known as the Wilderness, west of Fredericksburg, Virginia. -
Lee successfully stalls Grant's drive toward Richmond, Virginia. -
Abraham Lincoln is nominated by his party for a second term as president. -
Jubal Early's Confederates attack and drive troops of the Army of the Shenandoah from their camps on the banks of Cedar Creek south of Middletown, Virginia. -
Abraham Lincoln is reelected president of the United States. -
General Sherman's Army of Georgia marched to Savannah, Georgia, destroying everything along the way. -
The Confederate Army under John Bell Hood is thoroughly defeated and the threat to Tennessee ends. -
Union occupation of this fort at the mouth of the Cape Fear River closes access to Wilmington, the last southern seaport on the east coast that was open to blockade runners and commercial shipping. -
Wilmington, NC, falls to Union troops, closing the last important southern port on the east coast. -
President Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated for his second term as president in Washington, DC. -
Confederate troops attack and briefly capture the Union fort in the Petersburg siege lines in an attempt to thwart Union plans for a late March assault. By day's end, the southerners have been thrown out and the lines remain unchanged. -
The Confederate defeat at Five Forks initiates General Lee's decision to abandon the Petersburg-Richmond siege lines. -
General Lee abandons both cities and moves his army west in hopes of joining Confederate forces under General Johnston in North Carolina. -
One-third of Lee's army is cornered along the banks of Sailor's Creek and annihilated. -
After an early morning attempt to break through Union forces, Lee discusses terms with Grant. That afternoon in the parlor of Wilmer McLean, Lee signs the document of surrender. -
President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. -
The final battle of the Civil War takes place at Palmito Ranch, Texas. It is a Confederate victory. -
Confers citizenship on African Americans and guarantees equal rights. -
In the aftermath, 48 people, nearly all black, are dead, and hundreds of black homes, churches, and schools have been pillaged or burned. -
The fourteenth Amendment affirmins citizenship for African Americans. -
The Judicial Circuits Act reduces the number of United States circuit courts to nine and the number of Supreme Court justices to seven. -
On July 24, 1866, Tennessee is the first state to be readmitted to the United States of America -
A white mob attacks blacks and Radical Republicans attending a black suffrage convention, killing 40 people. -
Police kill more than 40 black and white Republicans and wound more than 150. -
The National Union Convention is held in Philadelphia with hopes to reconcile the Radical Republicans in Congress with the Reconstructionist policies of President Andrew Johnson. -
President Johnson formally declares the Civil War as over. -
When crowds heckle the president at his campaign, President Andrew Johnson's angry and undignified responses cause Grant and many Northerners to lose sympathy with the president and his lenient Reconstruction policies. -
African-American men are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia. -
Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state. -
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 outlined the terms for readmission to representation of rebel states. -
The new policies divide the South into military districts and require the states to adopt new constitutions, introduce black suffrage, and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Congress passed the Command of the Army Act requiring that all army commands go through the General in Chief. -
For $7.2 million the deal added 586,412 square miles to the United States—one-fifth of the present United States. -
The first elevated railroad in USA begins service in New York. -
Johnson orders Grant to take over the War Department temporarily. -
The United States takes control of Midway Island. -
U.S. takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, paying $7.2 million.