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The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publically threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House.
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Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June of 1861, which he would lead for the rest of the war.
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The Confederate shelling of the Union-held Fort Sumter at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, marked the start of a four-year civil war that would tear the United States apart and cost many thousands of lives.
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30,000 Union troops attacked a smaller Confederate force at Bull Run in Virginia. The Union drove the Confederates back at first, but then the Confederates unleashed a savage counterattack that forced Union lines to break and the Union to retreat.
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Lincoln knew that the Constitution did not give him the power to end slavery. The Constitution did, however, give him the power to take property from an enemy in wartime- and, by law, enslaved people were property.
The proclamation applied only to enslaved people in areas held by the Confederacy. -
Grant was entrusted with command of all US armies during the later years of the Civil War after proving to Lincoln that he was a competent leader.
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The last months of the war saw the Union determined to break the will of the South. Sherman and his men became destroyers. From Atlanta, Sherman’s troops burned cities and farmlands as they marched across Georgia to the Atlantic coast.
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When the Union captured the train carrying food to his troops and Lee was completely surrounded, he knew it was over. Grant and Lee met in the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Grant offered his terms, which Lee accepted.
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President Lincoln attended a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln in the head. Lincoln died several hours later.
