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Fort Sumpter
Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back. -
Battle of Bull Run (1st)
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas (the name used by Confederate forces), was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County near the City of Manassas. It was the first major land battle of the American Civil War. -
Battle of Hampton Roads
The Battle of Hampton Roads often referred to as the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack was the most noted and arguably most important naval battle of the American Civil War from the standpoint of the development of navies. It was fought over two days, March 8–9, 1862, in Hampton Roads, a roadstead in Virginia where the Elizabeth and Nansemond Rivers meet the James River just before it enters Chesapeake Bay. -
Battle of Shiloh
The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. -
Battle of Bull Run (2nd)
The Second Battle of Bull Run or Second Manassas, as it was called by the Confederacy, was fought August 28–30, 1862, as part of the American Civil War. It was the culmination of an offensive campaign waged by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia against Union Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia, and a battle of much larger scale and numbers than the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) fought in 1861 on the same ground. -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South), fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties. -
Battle of Fredricksburg
The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. The Union army's futile frontal assaults on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as he -
Emancipation Proclamation
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." -
Battle of Chancellorsvelle
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, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville. Two related battles were fought nearby on May 3 in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. The campaign pitted Union Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac against an army half its size, -
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Seige of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Gen. Maj. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North -
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Seige of Atlanta
With more than 100,000 troops under his command, Union General William T. Sherman kicked off the massive Atlanta campaign from Chattanooga Tennessee on May 5, 1864, against a Confederate force of some 65,000 under General Joseph E. Johnston. Sherman's advance was part of a coordinated Federal drive against the two main Confederate armies in the field in 1864; this drive by George G. Meade against Robert E. Lee and Sherman against Johnston was designed to end the war. -
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
On March 29, 1865, Phil Sheridan began the flanking movement that culminated, just 11 days later, in the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The box was supposed to be guarded by a policeman named John Frederick Parker, but he was certainly not at his post when Booth entered the box. John Wilkes Booth knew the play very well and he waited for the right moments to kill the president. When the main actor Harry Hawk was laughing, Booth ran forward and shot the president in the back of the head. Abraham Lincoln’s last words were replying to his wife “She won’t think anything about it." With Mrs Lincoln holding his hand. -
Ratification of the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H.Seward, in a proclamation, declared it to have been adopted. It was the first of the Reconstruction Amendments.
