Civil War Timeline

Surrender at Appomattox Court House

1865 BCE

The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

1865 BCE

Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865.

Sherman's march

1864 BCE

Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the military Savannah Campaign in the American Civil War, conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army.

conscription

1863 BCE

A draft that forced men to serve in the army

Gettysburg address

1863 BCE

The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, one of the best-known in American history.
Originally published: November 19, 1863

Emancipation Proclamation

1863 BCE

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."

Income tax

1863 BCE

An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) that varies with the income or profits (taxable bayag) of the taxpayer. Details vary widely by jurisdiction. Many jurisdictions refer to income tax on business entities as companies tax or corporate tax.

Battle at Gettysburg

1863 BCE

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point.Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's attempt to invade the North.

Battle of Antietam

1862 BCE

The Battle of Antietam /ænˈtiːtəm/, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, was fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek as part of the Maryland Campaign.

Formation Of the Confederacy

1861 BCE

On February 4, 1861, the states farthest south, where slavery and plantations agriculture were dominant, formed the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as President. They established their capital at Montgomery, Alabama and took over federal forts on their territory.

Battle of Bull Run

1861 BCE

This was the first major land battle of the armies in Virginia. On July 16, 1861, the untried Union army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run beyond Centreville. On the 21st, McDowell crossed at Sudley Ford and attacked the Confederate left flank on Matthews Hill. Fighting raged throughout the day as Confederate forces were driven back to Henry Hill.

Attack on Fort sumter

1861 BCE

The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–14, 1861) was the bombardment of U.S. Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, by the Confederates, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the U.S. Army that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the US Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor.

Abraham Lincoln becomes president

1860 BCE

In 1860, Lincoln won the party's presidential nomination. In the November 1860 election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Breckinridge and Bell.

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

1859 BCE

John Brown, a staunch abolitionist, and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse hide-out en route to Harpers Ferry. Descending upon the town in the early hours of October 17th, Brown and his men captured prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. Brown had hopes that the local slave population would join the raid and through the raid’s success weapons would be supplied to slaves and freedom fighters throughout the country; this was not to be.

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Debates

1858 BCE

The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.

Dread Scott v. Sandford

1857 BCE

also known simply as the Dred Scott case, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into the U.S., and sold as slaves", whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 BCE

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

1852 BCE

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly,s an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve.

Compromise of 1850

1850 BCE

As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah.

Fugitive Slave Act

1850 BCE

The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.

Underground Railroad

1850 BCE

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848 BCE

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo in Spanish), officially entitled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, is the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo

Abolition

1848 BCE

The movement to abolish slavery,became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. 19th century.

The North star

1847 BCE

Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper named it North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom.

Mexican-American War

1846 BCE

The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War, the U.S.–Mexican War or the Invasion of Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. It followed in the wake of the 1845 US annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory, despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.

Texas enters the United States

1845 BCE

exas enters the Union on Dec. 29, 1845. On this day in 1845, six months after the Congress of the Republic of Texas voted for annexation by the United States, Texas was admitted into the Union as the 28th state.

Manifest Destiny

1840 BCE

The 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.

Oregon Trail

1836 BCE

The Oregon Trail is a 2,170-mile (3,490 km)[1] historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas, and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.

Texas Revolution

1835 BCE

The Texas Revolution (October 2, 1835 – April 21, 1836) began when colonists (primarily from the United States) in the Mexican province of Texas rebelled against the increasingly centralist Mexican government. After a decade of political and cultural clashes between the Mexican government and the increasingly large population of American settlers in Texas, hostilities erupted in October 1835.

Stephen F. Austin goes to jail

1833 BCE

Stephen F Austin was arrested and imprisoned by Mexicans in 1833 for treason. He was an American empressario often referred to as the "Father of Texas" for leading the colonization of the region in the nineteenth century.

The Liberator

1831 BCE

The Liberator (1831–1865) was an abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp in 1831.Garrison co-published weekly issues of The Liberator from Boston continuously for 35 years, from January 1, 1831, to the final issue of December 29, 1865.the newspaper earned nationwide notoriety for its uncompromising advocacy of "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the United States. Garrison set the tone for the paper in his famous open letter

Nat Turner's Rebellion

1831 BCE

Nat Turner's Rebellion (also known as the Southampton Insurrection) was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, during August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the Southern United States.

Mexico abolished slavery

1829 BCE

In 1829 the Guerrero decree conditionally abolished slavery throughout Mexican territories. It was a decision that increased tensions with slaveholders among the Anglo-Americans. After the Texas Revolution ended in 1836, the Constitution of the Republic of Texas made slavery legal.

San Felipe de Austin

1823 BCE

San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site is a historic site located in San Felipe, Austin County, Texas. The site preserves the location of the first provisional capital and Anglo-American colony in Mexican-owned Texas.
San Felipe de Austin was established in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin, who initially brought 297 families, the Old Three Hundred, under a contract with the Mexican Government.

Santa Fe Trail

1821 BCE

The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City.

Missouri Compromise 1820-1821

1820 BCE

The Missouri Compromise was a United States federal statute devised by Henry Clay. It regulated slavery in the country's western territories by prohibiting the practice in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri.

Harriet Tubman

1489 BCE

Born a slave in Maryland in 1820 or 1821. After Tubman's owner died,she heard rumors that she was about be sold ,Tubman decided to make a break for freedom and succeeded in reaching Philadelphia.

Battle at Vicksburg

Oct 10, 1863

In May and June of 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s armies converged on Vicksburg, investing the city and entrapping a Confederate army under Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the Confederacy was effectively split in half.

Thirteenth Amendment

Oct 10, 1864

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865.