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Following South Carolina's lead, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas form the Confederate States of America.
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Though South Carolina had seceded four months prior, Union troops still occupied Fort Sumter in Charleston's harbor. Confederate artillery forced the Union to evacuate the installation.
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After President Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, the upland South - Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee - seceded from the United States and joined the Confederacy.
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The First Battle of Bull Run, fought near Manassas, Virginia, demonstrated to the Union that the rebellion would not come to a swift end.
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In November 1861, the Union warship San Jacinto seized the British civilian ship Trent and captured two Confederate diplomats. The Confederacy saw this as an opportunity to portray themselves as oppressed by the Union/
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At Island #10 on the Tennessee-Missouri border, Union and Confederate squadrons of ironclads squared off in one of the first modern naval battles.
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The Union won a costly victory in southwestern Tennessee, taking the upper hand on the western front of the Civil War.
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The Battle of Antietam, fought in Sharpsburg, Maryland, led to the highest single day number of casualties in American history at over 22,000.
The worst part? Neither side actually won the battle. -
At Fredericksburg, the General Ambrose Burnside and the Army of the Potomac uffered a terribly lopsided defeat. The aftermath of the Battle of Fredericksburg could be said to have been the low point of the war for the Union.
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At the Battle of Stones River, the second battle near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, both the Union and the Confederacy lost a higher percentage of their engaged forces than at any other battle in the war.
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In a move both to solidify the Union's ideological stand on slavery and to increase the pool of able-bodied men, Abraham Lincoln freed slaves in the Union proper with the Emancipation Proclamation.
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Though Chancellorsville was a Confederate victory, the aftermath went in the Union's favor. Confederate war hero General "Stonewall" Jackson was killed, damaging the South's fragile command structure.
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With Pickett's futile charge at the Battle of Gettysburg (the most famous Union victory), the Confederacy reached its "high water mark".
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While some historians call Gettysburg the turning point of the American Civil War, it was the Union victory at VIcksburg which sent the course of the conflict in the North's favor. Vicksburg's capture effectively split the Confederacy in half, isolating it from resources west of the Mississippi River.
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Working-class New Yorkers, angered that the rich could pay to exempt themselves from the draft, rioted in New York City. The riot devolved into violence against freed blacks, as the workers viewed the blacks as the reason for the war.
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Lincoln famously gave the Gettysburg Address to commemorate the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
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Lincoln proclaimed the 10% Plan, allowing for Confederate states to re-enter the Union once 10% of adult men in that state swore an oath of loyalty.
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At Cold Harbor in Virginia, the Union took terrible numbers of casualties in one of their few defeats in the latter part of the war.
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Union forces laid siege to Petersburg, the stronghold defending Richmond. Large quantities of artillery fire both left Richmond in ruins and led to one of the first large-scale uses of trench warfare.
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Radical Republicans sought for the punishment of the South in the Wade-Davis Bill. Lincoln vetoed it.
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General Sherman seized Atlanta on his March to the Sea, and burned it to cripple the Confederacy.
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The Freedmen Bureau is established to protect the rights of newly freed blacks in the Union.
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The Civil War "ended" where it began. In Wilmer McLean's Virginia home, which had been hit by a cannonball to begin the First Battle of Bull Run, Union General "Unconditional Surrender" Grant negotiated peace with Confederate hero Robert E. Lee.
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While watching a play with his wife, Lincoln was shot by Confederate actor John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died the next day.
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Johnson's Proclamation of the War's End
By May of 1865, now-President Andrew Jognson proclaimed the war essentially over. -
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Starting in November 1865, Southern States began to legislate "Black Codes" to restrict newly freed blacks.
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The 13th Amendment is ratified, abolishing slavery.
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Ex-Confederates in Pulaski, Tennessee create the first incarnation of the KKK.
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The 1866 Civil Rights Act laid the foundation for what would later be the Fourteenth Amendment.
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Johnson issues the Reconstruction Act, implementing military rule in the South until conditions are met.
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Andrew Johnson is impeached, but not (barely) thrown out of office.
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The 14th Amendment is ratified, extending citizenship and due process to blacks.
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The 15th Amendment is ratified, extending suffrage to black men.
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The Hayes-Tilden Compromise designates Rutherford B. Hayes as President and pulls all military troops out of the South, ending Reconstruction.
