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Uncle Tom's Cabin
Also known as Life Among the Lowly, this is an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It became popular among white readers in the North, by dramatizing the experience of slavery. -
Republican Party is formed
By February 1854, pro-abolitionist Whigs meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Allowed people in Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. It replaced the Missouri Compromise of 1820. -
Dred Scott vs. Sandford Decision
Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri who resided in Illinois (a free state) and in Louisiana Territory where slavery was forbidden. After returning to Missouri, Scott tried suing in the Missouri courts for his freedom; his residence in free territory made him a free man. The judges thought that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional in violation of the Fifth Amendment, treating Scott as property, not as a person. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
The raid was part of a plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in Maryland and Virginia. Brown was captured during the raid, convicted of treason and hanged, but now white Southern feared slave rebellions more than ever and increased tension between Northern and Southern states. -
John Brown is Hanged
In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown is executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection. -
South Carolina Secession
South Carolina voted to secede from the USA. -
Lincoln's Presidency
Lincoln was elected President. -
Richmond- the Capital of the Confederacy
The Confederate capital became Richmond. -
Confederate Forces Fire on Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter had been causing tension between the Union and Confederacy. After South Carolina, the state demanded the fort be turned over but the Union refused. For South Carolinians, secession meant little if the North still got the stronghold. The Confederates demanded surrender of the fort, but Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, refused. They kept firing until the Union gave up. -
General Lee, Commander of the Army of North Virginia
General Robert E. Lee was named Commander of the Army of North Virginia. -
Lincoln Suspends Habeas Corpus
When Congress was called into special session, July 4, 1861, President Lincoln issued a message to both houses defending his various actions, including the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that it was both necessary and constitutional for him to have suspended it without Congress. -
First Battle of Bull Run
The first major land battle of the American Civil War. Also known as Manassas, they planned to strike a Confederate force of 20,000 along Bull Run, a river. After fighting on the defensive for most of the day, the rebels rallied and were able to break the Union, forcing them to surrender. The Confederate victory gave the South a surge of confidence. -
The President of Confederacy
He was a Confederate slaveowner named Jefferson Davis. Also the first and only President of the Confederacy before it fell. He was popular among Southerners because they thought alike. -
The Merrimack and the Monitor fight of the North Virginia Coast
Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, also known as Battle of Hampton Roads in the American Civil War, with Monitor being the Union ship and Merrimack the Confederate, was the beginning of the era of naval warfare. Firing was ineffective due to undeveloped technology. -
Battle of Shiloh
Union artillery turned the tide as Confederates surrounded the Union troops and captured, killed, or wounded many of them. Confederate forces were driven away. The Confederate defeat ended any hopes of blocking the Union advance into northern Mississippi. There were over 23,000 casualties and was the bloodiest battle in American history up to that time. -
Battle of Antietam
aka the Battle of Sharpsburg. (Confederate) Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia against (Union) McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and was the culmination (climax) of Lee’s attempt to invade the north. It's the deadliest one-day battle in all American military history. -
Battle of Fredericksburg
Nearly 200,000 combatants, the largest concentration of troops in any Civil War battle. Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Army of the Potomac(north), led over 120,000 troops to cross the Rappahannock River, where they surrounded and attacked the right and left flanks of Lee’s North Virginian army of 80,000. Lee’s soldiers attacked back, killing nearly 13,000. The south won. -
Emancipation Proclamation
At first, Lincoln thought that national preservation was more critical than banning slavery. Though he thought it was wrong, he knew that Southerners, or even Northerners, would support abolition as a war aim. But as slaves fled to join Union armies, Lincoln saw that abolition had become a reason for war and was morally correct. Soon after Antietam, he wrote that as of 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states shall be free. -
The Gettysburg Address
Lincoln was invited to make the remarks at Gettysburg. He seized this opportunity to make a broad statement to the American people on the significance of the war. -
Battle of Chancellorsville
A Confederate victory that stopped General Hooker's Army of the Potomac surrounding attack against the left of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. -
Confederates surrender at Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. -
Battle of Gettysburg
General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. Considered the most important battle in the war because it was so bloody(over 50,000 in 3 days). The attack managed to get to the border but failed, thousands of his soldiers dead, so he surrenders. -
New York City Draft Riots
Known as Draft Week, these were outbursts of violence in Manhattan and was the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the war. -
Lincoln vs. McClellan
Lincoln wins the election against McClellan, earning himself a re-election. -
Atlanta is Captured
Atlanta was used as a center for military operations and as a supply route by the Confederate army during the Civil War, so it became a target for the Union army. General Sherman and his troops captured the city in 1864. In order to weaken the Confederate military organization, Union troops burned Atlanta to the ground before they moved on. -
Sherman Begins His March to the Sea
A military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. -
Freedmen's Bureau is Created
Formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Freedmen's Bureau was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. -
Congress Passes the 13th Amendment
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This banned slavery. -
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
President Lincoln took oath this day. This was around a month before his assassination. -
Richmond Falls to the Union Army
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Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox
With the Confederate capital of Richmond burned, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no choice. -
Lincoln's Assassination
John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate that planned to kidnap Lincoln and hand him over in exchange for a few Confederate prisoners. However, he heard that Lincoln thought that black people should have the right to vote and decided then and there to kill him. -
John Wilkes Booth is Killed
Booth was killed in Port Royal, Virginia due to his treasonous crime.
