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December 20, 1860
South Carolina secedes from the United States. -
November 6, 1860
The American people elect Abraham Lincoln as sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln is the first Republican president in the nation and represents a party that opposes the spread of slavery into the territories of the United States. -
December 17, 1860
The first state Secession Convention meets in Columbia, South Carolina. -
January 1861
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas secede from the United States -
February 4, 1861
The southern states that had seceded assemble delegates at Montgomery, Alabama to organize the Confederate States of America. The delegates are tasked with drafting a Confederate Constitution and establishing a provisional government. -
April 12, 1861
Confederate forces fire upon Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The Civil War formally begins. -
July 21, 1861
The Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas), is fought near Manassas, Virginia. The Union Army under General Irwin McDowell initially succeeds in driving back Confederate forces under General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard, but the arrival of troops under General Joseph E. Johnston initiates a series of reverses that sends McDowell's army in a panicked retreat to the defenses of Washington. -
May 26, 1865
After all the fighting, general Simon Bolivar Buckner agrees to terms of surrender of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, which are agreed to on June 2, 1865. With this surrender of the last large Confederate army, the Civil War officially ends. -
February 18, 1861
The delegates at the Montgomery Convention appoint Jefferson Davis as provisional President of the Confederate States of America at Montgomery, Alabama, a position he will hold until elections can be arranged.