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Abraham Lincoln Elected
Abraham Lincoln is elected sixteenth president of the United States, the first Republican president in the nation who represents a party that opposes the spread of slavery in the territories of the United States. -
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The Civil War
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Civil War Begins
Southern forces fire upon Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The Civil War has formally begun. -
Battle of Bull Run
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 initates a series of reverses that sends McDowell's army in a panicked retreat to the defenses of Washington. It is here that Thomas Jonathan Jackson, a professor at VMI, will receive everlasting fame as "Stonewall" -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg), Maryland, the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. The result of the battle ends General Lee's first invasion of the North. Following the Union victory, President Lincoln will introduce the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed every slave in the Confederate States. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. Applauded by many abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, there are others who feel it does not go far enough to totally abolish slavery. -
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln delivered the speech during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. -
Civil War Ends
Shortly after noon on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all United States forces, at the home of Wilmer McClean in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. With this meeting, the Civil War was effectively over.
