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The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with its main historic rival, -
It became law on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote. -
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. -
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 6, 1860. -
When Lincoln gave that address on March 4, 1861, seven southern states had already seceded from the nation, and civil war was imminent. -
Confederates fire hotshot from Fort Moultrie into Fort Sumter. Buildings begin to burn within the fort. With no more resources, Anderson surrenders Fort Sumter -
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. -
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Manassas, marked the first major land battle of the American Civil War. On July 21, 1861, Union and Confederate armies clashed near Manassas Junction, Virginia. -
Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress earlier in the year. -
history's first duel between ironclad warships and the beginning of a new era of naval warfare. -
The Battle of Shiloh was an early battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, -
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. -
The Battle of Antietam, or Battle of Sharpsburg particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War -
Near the end 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. -
The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. -
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, -
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 Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Vicksburg campaign was one of the Union's most successful of the war. -
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. -
Union General Sherman's scorched-earth March to the Sea campaign begins. On November 15, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman begins his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines. -
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the close of ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Honoring a request to offer a few remarks, Lincoln memorialized the Union dead and highlighted the redemptive power of their sacrifice -
General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta -
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States -
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. -
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. -
Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate government moved the capital to Richmond, the South's second largest city. The move served to solidify the state of Virginia's new Confederate identity and to sanctify the rebellion by associating it with the American Revolution. -
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. -
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington -
John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.