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The Confederate States of America
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, and Alabama all voted to secede from the Union and the Confederate States of America was created. States in the Upper South, such as Virginia and Kentucky, were not eager to join the secessionist movement because there were fewer slaves in these states. President Buchanan stated that secession from the Union was illegal, but nowhere in the Constitution was it stated that any state could be forced to remain in the Union. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
The first armed conflict of the American Civil War was at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. On April 12, 1861, the Confederates bombarded the fort from artillery batteries surrounding the harbor. Although the Union returned fire, they were significantly outgunned. After 34 hours, the Union agreed to evacuate. -
The Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan was proposed by Winfield Scott and was reviewed more carefully by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had the United States Navy blockade Southern ports. Industrial goods that the South had imported from the industrial North now could not be obtained from Europe either. Later, Confederate states could not export cotton to Europe for very badly needed currency. -
The Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln realized that the continued existence of slavery in the South would make a Northern victory harder. On January 1,1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves in any state. The timing was a brilliant political move. This gave Northerners a moral justification to continue fighting. -
Battle of Gettysburg
In June 1863, General Lee decided to move the Confederate army out of Virginia into Pennsylvania. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee was defeated by the Union army, commanded by General Meade. This was the bloodiest battle of the war, with 24,000 casualties suffered by the North and 28,000 of the South. Lee's army was forced to retreat to Virginia and would never again be able to mount an attack in Northern territory. -
The Gettysburg Address
A speech made by Abraham Lincoln at a dedication ceremony for a cemetery for Union soldiers who had died at the Battle of Gettsyburg. In the speech Lincoln stated that freedom should exist in the United States for all men and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." -
Sherman's March to the Sea
General Sherman of the North believed that the War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken.Sherman then began an operation of total war. The army destroyed the railroads and the manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure of Georgia. -
Surrender in Appomattox
General Lee of the South took the Confederate army from Richmond and tried to escape to the South. The Union army caught up to him and he finally surrendered at the courthouse in Appomattox, Virginia. The Confederate states were allowed back into the Union if they had the majority of people take an oath of allegiance. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln only had time to begin to plan for what a post-Civil War America would look like. On April 14, 1865, he was assassinated by a pro-Southener, John Wilkes Booth, at Ford's Theater. Booth was hunted down several days later and was kill by gunfire. Several others conspiring with him were found and after trials by military tribunals, hanged. The incredibly difficult task of reconstruction would have to be handled by the new president, Andrew Johnson. -
Reconstruction Era
The period after the Civil War during which Northern political leaders created plans for the governance of the South and a procedure for former Southern states to rejoin the Union. New changes in the South gave newly freed slaves additional economic, social, and political rights. These changes were greatly resented by many Southerners, causing the creation of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877.
