-
On November 10, 1860 the S.C. General Assembly called for a "Convention of the People of South Carolina" to consider secession. Delegates were to be elected on December 6. The secession convention convened in Columbia on December 17 and voted unanimously, 169-0, to declare secession from the United States. -
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth President of the United States. -
When President Abraham Lincoln announced plans to resupply the fort, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, kicking off the Battle of Fort Sumter. After a 34-hour exchange of artillery fire, Anderson and 86 soldiers surrendered the fort on April 13. -
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 state of Virginia stayed out of the Confederacy, so Jefferson Davis sent his vice president Alexander H. Stephens there to try to coax secession. Virginia seceded on the 17th of April, offered Richmond as national capital ten days later, and on May 20th the Confederate Congress took up the offer. -
The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 30 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. -
On November 6, 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected president, not of the United States of America but of the Confederate States of America. He ran unopposed and was elected to serve for a six-year term. Davis had already been serving as the temporary president for almost a year. -
Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, also called Battle of Hampton Roads, (March 9, 1862), in the 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. -
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, allowed Union troops to penetrate the Confederate interior. The carnage was unprecedented, with the human toll being the greatest of any war on the American continent up to that date. -
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. It also gave President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation at a moment of strength rather than desperation. -
The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. The combat, between the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen.
-
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 two men parted with only an agreement to a brief cease-fire. Later that night, Grant relented. He offered parole to Pemberton and his army, which the Confederate general accepted. The surrender was finalized the next day, July 4, 1863, and the Union army took control of the city. -
The New York Draft Riots occurred in July 1863, when 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. -
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the end of the ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That speech has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address. -
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. -
In the midst 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 rampage 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. The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. -
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. -
Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on Saturday, March 4, 1865, during his second inauguration as President of the United States -
On the morning of Sunday, April 2, 1865, Confederate lines near Petersburg broke after a nine-month siege. The retreat of the army left the Confederate capital of Richmond, 25 miles to the north, defenseless -
In Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. -
Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, the country's greatest moral, cultural, constitutional, and political crisis. -
John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Twenty-six-year-old Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country when he shot Lincoln during a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on the night of April 14.
Looking for a timeline maker?
Create timelines for projects, roadmaps, history, lessons, legal cases, and stories with Timetoast. Timetoast is a timeline maker for work, school, research, and stories.