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Fort Sumter
The first battle of the American Civil War. The Confederate artillery in the unfinished fort in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. This kickstarted the Civil War. -
First Battle of Bull Run
It was fought in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and southwest of Washington, D.C. The Union lost. -
Battle of Antietam
The battle plans were left around a cigar, and the north found it. Both sides rushed to Antietam Creek, and the north almost had a win, but reinforcements came and they lost again. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation (, and executive order) issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. -
Formation of the 54th Mass.
Massachusetts did not have many African-American residents, but by the time 54th Infantry regiment headed off to training camp two weeks later more than 1,000 men had volunteered. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The advancing Confederates clashed with the Union’s Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George G. Meade, at the crossroads town of Gettysburg, followed by Lee, who ordered an attack by fewer than 15,000 troops on the enemy’s center at Cemetery Ridge. Did you know that Gettysburg is the costliest land battle of the American Civil War (46,286 casualties) -
Defeat of Vicksburg
The capture of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy and proved the military genius of Union General Ulysses S. Grant. -
New York City Draft Riots
Rioters torched government buildings and fought pitched battles with troops. Conservative contemporary commentators, concerned about an anti-Union plot, claimed that 1,155 people were killed. In fact, about 300, over half of them policemen and soldiers, were injured, and there were no more than 119 fatalities, most of them rioters. -
Shermans March to the Sea
The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman’s soldiers did not destroy any of the towns in their path, but they stole food and livestock and burned the houses and barns of people who tried to fight back. The Yankees were “not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people,” Sherman explained; as a result, they needed to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” -
Gettysburg Address
President Abraham Lincoln was invited to deliver remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. Though he was not the featured orator that day, Lincoln’s 273 word address would be remembered as one of the most important speeches in American history. -
Congress passes the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
Appomattox Court House
Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg; his goal was to rally the remnants of his beseiged troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end. -
Freedmans Bureau
Intended as a temporary agency to last the duration of the war and one year afterward, the bureau was placed under the authority of the War Department and the majority of its original employees were Civil War soldiers. -
Assasination of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. -
14th Amendment
The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
End of Reconstruction
Reconstruction ended the remnants of Confederate nationalism and of slavery, making the Freedmen citizens with civil rights apparently guaranteed by three new Constitutional amendments. -
Supreme Court case Plessy vs Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal".