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Confed convention in Charleston
A convention meeting in Charleston declared unanimously that the union between South Carolina and the other states wwas to be dissolved. This was behind the theory that the Union was a compact with which one state could sever its connection by the vote of a convention. -
Crittenden comrpomise proposed
Proposed by John Critenden, this was a plan that served as the focus for discussion when Congress reconvened in 1860. This compromise resembled Henry Clay's compromises, and advocated extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific to guarantee the protection of slavery in the south western territories and in any territories south of the lie that might be acquied in the future. -
Total of seven states seceded.
Seven states had removed themselves from the union by this time: South Carolina, Alabaama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. -
Confederation States of America established
Without waiting for their sister slave states, the delegates from the deep south met in Montgomery Alabama to establish the Confederation. The conventio acted as a provisional government while at the same time frafting a permanent constitution. -
Presdident Lincoln comes to office
Lincoln, scarcely able to anticipate the challenges he would face, comes to office. The immediate problem now was how to respond to the seceession of the deep south. -
Sanitary Commision
During the war, norhtern women pushed the boundaries of their traditional roles by participtinf on the home front as fund raisers and in the rear lines as army nurses and members of the Sanitary commision, which promoted health in the northern army's camps through attention to cleanliness, nurition and medical care. -
Jefferson David inagurated
Jefferson David was inaugurated as the president of the confederacy. he was a West Point graduate and had served as a secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce. -
Lincoln gives inaugural address.
President Abraham Lincoln gives inaugural address,during which he recalled that during the winter man patriotic men had urged him to accept a compromise that would shift the ground on which he had been elected. -
Union forces surrender at Fort Sumter
Under Major Robert Anderson, the union forces surrendered and a confederate flag was raised, The South had won victory, but had also assumed responsibility for firing the first shot. -
Lincoln sends 75000 troops to put down insurrection.
Lincoln sends troops to put down an insurrection in the deep south against federal authority. -
Virginia convention joins Confederacy.
Two days after Lincoln sends troops to put down insurrection in the Deep South, a sitting Virginia convention, which had earlier rejected secession, reversed itself and joined the Confeeracy. -
Confederacy passed conscription law
Confederacy passed conscription law in order to resolve the problem of a dried up pool of volunteers for the war. Many of the early recruits, who had been enrolled for short terms, were reluctant to reelist. -
Congress gives Lincoln power to assign quotas to each state.
Congress gave President Lincoln power to assign manpower quotas to each state and resort to conscription if they were not met. -
Civilians in urban areas riot to protest shortages of food.
When northern forces penetrated parts of the South, much of the corn and livestock that was raised could not reach the people who needed it. As a result, rioters protested shortages of food. -
Enrollment Act of 1863
Provided for outright consription of white males but permitted men of wealth to hire substitutes or pay a fee to avoid military service. It provoked a violent response from those unable to buy their way out of service and unwilling to fight. -
Assault on Fort Wagner
A celebrated unsuccessful but heroic assult in the harbor of Charleston. Casualty rate for the 54th Massachusetts colored regiment exceeded fifty percent. -
Grant promoted to General in Cheif of all Union armies.
Grant promoted after vicotires in the west after which he ordered a multipronged offensive to finish off the Confederacy. -
Lee and Grant fought a series of bloody battles
Lee and Grant fight a series of bloody battles in northern Virginia that tended to follow a set pattern: Lee would take up an entrenched poistion and Grant would attack it, infliting casualties the shrinking confederate army could ill afford. -
Thirteenth Amendment approved
House passes amendment to the federal consittution outlawing involuntary servitude,. -
Confederates abandon Petersburg.
When Lee's starving and exhausted army tried to break through the Union lines, Grant renewed his attack and forced the confederates to abandon petersburg and Richmond. He then pursued them westward for a hundred miles, placing his forces in position t cut off their line of retreat to the South.
