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Kansas is admitted to the Union. It is 34th U.S. state and was supposed to be a slave state. Much controversy led it to eventually become free. -
Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis presents resolutions as to why slavery should be allowed in the territories. He also gave reasons as to why the nation should protect slaveholders. His intention was to unite the Democratic party. -
Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, gave a speech at Cooper Union in New York City. Lincoln delivered a forceful and well-reasoned argument against the spread of enslavement and became an overnight star and a leading candidate for the upcoming presidential election. -
The first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. -
African Americans stage a ride on streetcars in New Orleans to protest segregation. -
The former members of the American and Whig parties meet in Baltimore and form the Constitutional Union Party, They elect John Bell to be their candidate for president and Edward Everett as candidate for vice president. -
Abraham Lincoln elected sixteenth president of the United States. First Republican president who opposes the spread of slavery in the U.S. -
The first Secession Convention meets in Columbia, South Carolina. -
Despite considerable popular support for Crittenden's compromise, Congress failed to enact it. It would have required the Republican Party to repudiate its guiding principle: no extension of slavery into the western territories -
South Carolina is the first to secede in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s election. -
Vice President John C. Breckenridge appoints a Committee of Thirteen U.S. Senators of differing views, including Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, William Seward, and Stephen A. Douglas, to consider the state of the nation and to propose solutions to the crisis. -
Mississippi secedes from the Union. -
Florida secedes from the Union. -
Alabama secedes from the Union. -
Georgia secedes from the Union. -
Louisiana secedes from the Union. -
Texas secedes from the Union. -
Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln calls for peace with the erring seceding states. -
The Constitution of the Confederate States of America is signed in Montgomery, Alabama. -
General P.G.T. Beauregard bombard Major Robert Anderson and his Union soldiers at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. -
Major Robert Anderson surrenders Fort Sumter to Confederate forces after two days of bombardment. -
The Confederate ironclad USS Merrimack battles the Union ironclad USS Monitor in Chesapeake Bay. The battle is a draw but changes naval warfare forever. -
Union General Ulysses S. Grant's forces are surprised at Shiloh in Tennessee. The battle results in 13,000 Union and 10,000 Confederate casualties, more than all previous American wars combined. -
Continuing his advance, Union General Ulysses S. Grant attacks Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces at Spotsylvania. Grant loses more soldiers than Lee. Still, General Lee is forced to retreat south. -
General Robert E. Lee assumes command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. -
Over the course of seven days, General Robert E. Lee attacks George McClellan's Union Army of the Potomac near Richmond, Virginia. Huge casualties cause McClellan to withdraw north towards Washington. -
First Battle of Bull Run pits Union General Irvin McDowell against the Confederate army. McDowell is defeated, they retreat back to Washington. -
The Second Battle of Bull Run is a resounding victory for Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Union General John Pope is blamed for the loss and is relieved of his duties after the battle. -
The Battle of Antietam is the bloodiest day in United States history. Over 26,000 men are killed, wounded or missing in action on both sides. Though officially a draw, the battle stops General Robert E. Lee's invasion of Maryland and he retreats back to Virginia. -
Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declares his intention to free all slaves in any new territory captured by the Union Army. -
The Union Army under General Ambrose E. Burnside suffers a horrible defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia. Fourteen individual assaults on an entrenched Confederate position cost the Union 13,000 casualties. -
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. It frees all slaves in territory captured by the Union Army, and orders the enlistment of Black soldiers. From this point forward, the Civil War is a war over slavery. -
Congress enacts the first draft in American history, requiring every man to serve in the army unless he can furnish a substitute or pay the government $300. These escape provisions are wildly unpopular with workers and recent immigrants, and lead to draft riots in New York and other northern cities. -
Over the course of three days, General Robert E. Lee divides his army in the face of a larger enemy, and manages to defeat the Union Army led by "Fighting" Joe Hooker. The North suffers 17,000 casualties, the South 13,000. -
Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson dies from wounds sustained when he was mistakenly shot by his own troops at Chancellorsville. -
From July 1st to July 4th, the Union Army under General Meade defeats Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army at Gettysburg. Bloodiest battles of the war, Gettysburg is a turning point. Marks the farthest advance of the Confederate Army into Northern territory. -
Far to the West on the Mississippi River, General Ulysses S. Grant takes Vicksburg after a long siege. At this point, the Union controls the entire river, cutting the Confederacy in two. -
Robert E. Lee orders George Pickett to assault entrenched Union positions. More than half of the 12,000 Confederate soldiers who participate in the charge are slaughtered as they walk slowly across a 3/4-mile field into a hail of gunfire. -
When the government attempts to begin conscription, riots break out in New York and other northern cities. In New York, 120 men, women and children—mostly Black—are killed before Union troops returning from Gettysburg restore order. -
Union General William Rosecrans is defeated by Confederate General Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Chickamauga, in Tennessee. -
President Lincoln delivers the two-minute Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. -
After weeks of digging, 109 Union officers made their escape from the notorious Libby Prison, the largest and most sensational escape of the war. Though 48 of the escapees were later captured and two drowned, 59 were able to make their way into Union lines. -
The CSS H.L. Hunley, a seven-man submergible craft, attacked the USS Houstonic outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Struck by the submarine's torpedo, the Housatonic broke apart and sank, taking all but five of her crew with her. Likewise, the Hunley was also lost and never heard from again until discovered in 1995 at the spot where it sank after the attack. -
Lincoln appoints Ulysses S. Grant commander of all Union armies, ending his long search for a decent general to command northern forces. General William T. Sherman takes over as commander in the West. -
Beginning a drive aimed at ending the war, Ulysses S. Grant and 120,000 troops march south toward Richmond, the Confederate capital. Over the course of the next six weeks, a brutal war of attrition results in the deaths of nearly 50,000 Union soldiers. -
During the horrific Battle of the Wilderness, thousands of men burn to death as the woods in which they were fighting catch fire. -
The bloody battle of Cold Harbor is a disaster for the Union. General Ulysses S. Grant makes a series of tactical mistakes that result in the deaths of 7,000 Union in 20 minutes. -
With the beginning of the Siege of Petersburg, south of Richmond, the mobile war of the past month ends, replaced by a nine-month siege. -
After a month of raiding Sherman's supply lines and attacking Union outposts, John Bell Hood's army confronts Union troops from General John Schofield's command, who they had encountered the day before near Spring Hill, Tennessee. A massive frontal assault on the well entrenched Federal line meets with disaster. Despite some taking of outside works and defenses, the toll for Hood's forces is too heavy including the loss of six of his generals. Union troops retreat in the direction of Nashville. -
The Confederate Army under John Bell Hood is thoroughly defeated and the threat to Tennessee ends. -
Harassed only by scattered Georgia militia, Sherman's Army of Georgia arrives at Savannah, Georgia, completing the famous "March to the Sea". At Savannah, his troops will take Fort McAllister and force Confederate defenders to evacuate the city. -
The United States Congress approves the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which will abolish slavery. -
Lincoln is sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. -
Touted as "Lee's last offensive", Confederate troops under General John B. Gordon attack and briefly capture the Union fort in the Petersburg siege lines in an attempt to thwart Union plans for a late March assault. By day's end, the southerners have been thrown out and the lines remain unchanged. -
The Siege of Petersburg ends as Ulysses S. Grant's army breaks through Confederate lines and marches toward Richmond. -
The Union Army captures Richmond, Virginia, which is nearly leveled by shelling and fire. -
After an early morning attempt to break through Union forces blocking the route west to Danville, Virginia, Lee seeks an audience with General Grant to discuss terms. That afternoon in the parlor of Wilmer McLean, Lee signs the document of surrender. On April 12, the Army of Northern Virginia formally surrenders and is disbanded. -
President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. On the same day, Fort Sumter, South Carolina is re-occupied by Union troops. -
General Joe Johnston, leading the largest Confederate Army still in existence, surrenders in North Carolina. -
Under General William Sherman’s command, the Union army capture the Confederate stronghold of Atlanta and embark on a campaign of destruction aimed at breaking the will of the Confederate army. -
The 13th Amendment is ratified by the States. Slavery is abolished -
President Johnson vetoes a supplemental Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which Republican moderates have designed to extend protection to Southern blacks. -
Grants citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States. It passes both houses of Congress by overwhelming majorities, and when President Johnson vetoes it, Congress overrides the veto, making the bill the first major piece of legislation enacted over a presidential veto. The rift between Congress and the president is complete. -
Racial violence rages in Memphis, Tennessee for three days as whites assault blacks on the streets. In the aftermath, 48 people, nearly all black, are dead, and hundreds of black homes, churches, and schools have been pillaged or burned -
It writes the Republican vision of how post-Civil War American society should be structured into the U.S. Constitution, out of the reach of partisan politics. The amendment defines citizenship to include all people born or naturalized in the U.S. and increases the federal government's power over the states to protect all Americans' rights. It stops short of guaranteeing blacks the right to vote. The controversial amendment will take over two years to be ratified. -
President Johnson vetoes it again, and Congress again overrides the veto, making the bill a law. -
Tennessee is the first former Confederate state readmitted to the Union. -
A white mob attacks blacks and Radical Republicans attending a black suffrage convention, killing 40 people. -
Johnson orders Grant to take over the War Department temporarily. -
With Congress demanding that Southern states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to gain re-admittance to the legislature, President Johnson begins a disastrous speaking tour of the North to bolster support for his policies in the mid-term elections. He asks popular Union Gen Ulysses S. Grant to come along. When crowds heckle the president, Johnson's angry and undignified responses cause Grant and many Northerners to lose sympathy with the president and his lenient Reconstruction policies. -
Johnson's opponents are victorious, and the Republicans occupy enough seats to guarantee they will be able to override any presidential vetoes in the coming legislative session. -
The Ku Klux Klan reorganizes into a paramilitary organization led by a former Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest -
African American males are given the right to vote in Washington D.C. Congress over came President Johnson's veto to give the African Americans this right. -
The North Carolina legislature holds a whiskey party when it adjourns before the state's first election with black candidates. "We have lost all hope of escaping the vengeance of the Northern people," one state senator writes, "and are preparing for the worst." -
Congress passes the Tenure of Office Act, denying the right of the President to remove officials who had been appointed with the consent of Congress -
The first reconstruction act sets up five military districts in the South, each under the control of a military commander. The Army Appropriations Act is passed, lessening Johnsons' control on the army. The final act passed is The Tenure Office Act which states that Johnson cannot remove cabinet members without the Senate's consent. -
President Andrew Johnson announces the purchase of Alaska. This would be the second to last state added to the United States of America. -
Congress passes a bill admitting Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina into the Union. Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, having refused to ratify the fourteenth amendment, were refused admission into the Union. -
Johnson vetoes the third reconstruction act which spells out election procedures in the South and reasserts congressional control over the Reconstruction. Congress overrides Johnsons' veto. -
President Andrew Johnson tells Ulysses S. Grant that he intends to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who has been a consistent opponent of the president and is close to the Radical Republicans who dominate Congress. -
Congress seeks to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson for his lack of interest in forming reconstruction.