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Economic and social differences between the North and the South.
With Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1794, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton.The southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and on slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture. In fact, the northern industries were purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. -
States versus federal rights
The debate over which powers rightly belonged to the states and which to the Federal Government became heated again in the 1820s and 1830s fueled by the divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories forming as the nation expanded westward. Some examples would be the Missouri Compromise in which the Federal rights would win. Also the Kansas-Nebraska Act in which the states rights would win. -
Lincoln is elected president
Abraham Lincoln is elected president, the first Republican, receiving 180 of 303 possible electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote. -
Fort Sumter is attacked
At 4:30 a.m. Confederates under Gen. Pierre Beauregard open fire with 50 cannons upon Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The Civil War begins. -
The First Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as First Manassas, was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, near the city of Manassas. It was the first major land battle of the American Civil War. -
Battle of Shiloh
Confederate surprise attack on Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's unprepared troops at Shiloh on the Tennessee River results with 13,000 Union killed and wounded and 10,000 Confederates, more men than in all previous American wars combined. -
The Bloodiest Single-Day Battle of American History
The bloodiest day in U.S. military history as Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Armies are stopped at Antietam in Maryland by McClellan and his Union forces. By nightfall 26,000 men are dead, wounded, or missing. -
The Siege of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant used 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. -
The Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is often described as the war's turning point. -
Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan
It required confederate to pledge alliegence to the Union and if 10% of the voters took the oath then they could make a new government. Then if the state agreed to end slavery then they would be put back in the Union. -
Radical Reublicans
Radical Republicans were angered by Lincoln's 10% plan because it lacked leniency and because of the presidents seeming complacency. They also tried to pass the Wade-Davis bill but Lincoln put it down quickly. -
Appomattox Courthouse
General Lee surrendered to Grant by waving a white flag top of a hill overlooking the Appomattox River in Virginia. Grant later accepted the surrender.
