civil war

By josepht123

  • Republican Party is formed

    former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act passed

    repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty

  • Abraham Lincoln elected president

    the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency.

  • South Carolina votes to secede from the United States

    S.C. General Assembly called for a "Convention of the People of South Carolina" to consider secession.

  • Lincoln gives his second inaugural address

    seven southern states had already seceded from the nation, and civil war was imminent

  • Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter

    the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia.

  • Lincoln suspends habeas corpus

    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

  • First Battle of Bull Run is fought

    marked the first major land battle of the American Civil War.

  • Jefferson Davis elected president of the Confederacy

    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

  • The Merrimack and the Monitor fight of the Virginia coast

    naval engagement at Hampton Roads, Virginia, a harbor at the mouth of the James River, notable as history's first duel between ironclad warships and the beginning of a new era of naval warfare

  • Battle of Shiloh

    early battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War

  • Robert E. Lee is named commander of the Army of Northern Virginia

    the confederate forces were renamed the Army of Northern Virginia when Robert E. Lee assumed command

  • Battle of Antietam

    showed that the Union could stand against the Confederate army in the Eastern theater

  • Battle of Fredericksburg

    Confederate soldiers were strategically placed behind a stone wall along the Sunken Road. The battle resulted in significant casualties for the Union Army.

  • Emancipation Proclamation is announced

    The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

  • Battle of Chancellorsville

    was a major battle of the American Civil War, and the principal engagement of the Chancellorsville campaign

  • Battle of Gettysburg

    The Army of the Potomac was too weak to pursue the Confederates, and Lee led his army out of the North, never to invade it again.

  • Confederates surrender at Vicksburg

    With the fall of Vicksburg the control of the Mississippi River fell to the Union forces. The Confederacy could no longer get supplies across the Mississippi.

  • New York City draft riots

    sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan

  • Lincoln gives his Gettysburg Address

    a short speech at the close of ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  • Atlanta is captured

    Union Troops Capture Atlanta. During the Civil War, the fall of Atlanta proved to be a blow from which the Confederacy never recovered

  • Abraham Lincoln defeats George McClellan to win re-election

    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.

  • Sherman begins his March to the Sea

    Union General William T. Sherman begins his expedition across Georgia by torching the industrial section of Atlanta and pulling away from his supply lines.

  • Congress passes the 13th Amendment

    the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States

  • Freedman’s Bureau is created

    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.

  • Richmond falls to the Union Army

    Confederate lines near Peters burg broke after a nine month siege. The retreat of the army left the Confederate capital of Richmond, 25 miles to the north, defenseless

  • Richmond becomes the capital of the Confederacy

    Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate government moved the capital to Richmond, the South's second largest city.

  • Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox

    Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War

  • President Lincoln assassinated

    at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. by john wilkes booth

  • John Wilkes Booth is killed

    Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.