-
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
Abraham Lincoln, who warned the south in his inaugural address, "The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it," is elected president, receiving 180 of 303 possible electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote. As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. -
Period: to
Confederacy is Born
The southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia join South Carolina in seceding from the Union. These states will form the Confederate States when the Confederacy is officially formed on Feb. 4 1861. This event largely contributed to an idea of disunity and separation of government and society. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
Recognized as start of American Civil War, this battle took place at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. On April 12, 1861, General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command of the Confederate forces around Charleston Harbor, opened fire on the Union garrison holding Fort Sumter. At 2:30pm on April 13 Major Robert Anderson, garrison commander, surrendered the fort and was evacuated the next day. -
First Battle of Bull Run
It was the first land battle of major proportions in the Civil War. The battle took place near the city of Manassas in Prince William County, Virginia. There were more than 2800 casualties from this battle. -
Battle of Hampton Roads
The Confederate ironclad Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads where it sank Cumberland and ran Congress aground. On March 9, the Union ironclad Monitor having fortuitously arrived to do battle, initiated the first engagement of ironclads in history. The two ships fought each other to a standstill, but Virginia retired. -
Period: to
Peninsular Campaign
Large-scale but unsuccessful Union effort to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Va. The first phase of the campaign concluded with the indecisive Battle of Seven Pines, in which Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was seriously wounded and field command passed to Robert E. Lee. A second phase was characterized by three weeks of inactivity. The final phase ended triumphantly for the Confederates, who forced the withdrawal of the Federal Army of the Potomac after the Seven Days’ Battl -
Battle of Shiloh
The battle began when the Confederates launched a surprise attack on Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant in southwestern Tennessee. After initial successes, the Confederates were unable to hold their positions and were forced back, resulting in a Union victory. Both sides suffered heavy losses, and the level of violence shocked North and South alike. -
Battle of New Orleans
Naval action by Union forces seeking to capture the city. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico, adding to reasons why the Confederacy lost this battle. The permanent loss of New Orleans was considered one of the worst disasters suffered by the Confederacy in the western theatre of the war. -
Battle of New Orleans
Naval action by Union forces seeking to capture the city. Southern military strategists planned for a Union attack down the Mississippi, not from the Gulf of Mexico, adding to reasons why the Confederacy lost this battle. The permanent loss of New Orleans was considered one of the worst disasters suffered by the Confederacy in the western theatre of the war. -
Battle of Federicksburg
Burnside unsuccessful attempt to move South to launch an attack against the Southern Capital at Richmond resulted in overwhelming defeat. This combined with his abortive “Mud March” in January and other failures led to Burnside’s replacement by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker in January 1863. -
Emcancipation Proclamation
Using his war powers, an executive order is signed and issued by President Lincoln that freed 50,000 slaves right away. As the Union advanced, more than 3 million more slaves were freed. It included declaring forever free those slaves within the Confederacy. -
Fort Pillow Massacre
South outraged at the North’s use of black soldiers, Confederate slaughter of black Federal troops stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. From the beginning of hostilities, the Confederate leadership was faced with the question of whether to treat black soldiers captured in battle as slaves in insurrection or, as the Union insisted, as prisoners of war. -
Virginia Campaign
Beginning a drive aimed at ending the war, Ulysses S. Grant and 120,000 troops march south towards Richmond, the Confederate capital. Over the course of the next six weeks, a brutal war of attrition results in the deaths of nearly 50,000 Union soldiers. -
Battle of the Wilderness
The Battle of the Wilderness marked the first stage of a major Union offensive toward the Confederate capital of Richmond. The heavy woods negated the Union's numerical advantage, making orderly movement impossible and taking cavalry and artillery out of the equation.The Confederates won but Grant refused to retreat, and instead ordered his battered troops to continued southward in what would be a long and costly--but ultimately successful--campaign. -
Election of 1864
In 1864, President Lincoln was fighting an uphill battle for reelection. Backed by many Peace Democrats, former Union General-in-Chief George McClellan ran on a platform calling for near-immediate peace with the South and the Union's restoration with slavery intact. He won a convincing victory that November, carrying all but three states and winning 212 electoral votes. -
Period: to
Sherman's March
In November 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman left the captured city of Atlanta to burn and marched 62,000 of his Union forces southeast toward Savannah, located on Georgia's Atlantic coast. The march brought the harsh reality of total war home to many southerners and--as Sherman had intended--showed them that the Confederacy was unable to protect the homes, families and property of its own soldiers. -
Hampton Roads Conference
Lincoln's trusted adviser Francis P. Blair convinced the president to meet with Confederate representatives in informal peace talks. Lincoln refused to negotiate an armistice while the war still continued, and made it clear that the rebels must accept abolition of slavery as a condition of peace. He promised to treat them generously, including partial compensation to those states that voluntarily abolished slavery. -
Lee Surrenders
General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant in a farmhouse in the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This marks the end to the war. Reconstruction will soon begin. -
Assassination of President Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln and his wife were attending a show at Ford's Theatre in Washington when the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into the president's head. Lincoln’s assassination turned him into a martyr for the causes he championed--liberty and Union--but deprived the nation of a steadfast leader, even as it faced the monumental task of reconstructing the devastated South and mending the bonds broken by the historic conflict. -
Black Codes Enacted
Black Codes enacted, restricting rights of African Americans. The Black Codes granted African Americans certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts, but denied them the rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias, or to vote. They also declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners. -
Ratification of 13th Ammendment
On this day in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery. The single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.
