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Election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is elected he 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, constitutional union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois. -
Attack on Fort Sumter
Gen. Beauregard, in command of the provisional confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, demanded the surrender of the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Garrison commander Anderson refused. On April 12, Confederate batteries opened fie on the fort, which was unable to reply effectively. -
Battle of Hampton Roads
The March 9, 1862, battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack (CSS Virginia) during the American Civil war (1861-65) was history's first duel between ironclad warships. The engagement, know as the Battle of Hampton Roads, was part of a Confederate effort to break the Union blockade of Southern ports, including Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, the had been imposed at the start of the war. Though the battle itself was inconclusive, it began a new era in naval warfare. -
Battle of Antietam
On September17, 1862, Generals Robert E. Lee and George McClellan faced off near Antietam creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the first battle of the American Civil war to be fought on northern soil. Though McClellan failed toutlilize his numerical superiority to crush Lee's army, he was able to check the confederate advance into the north. After a string of Union defeats, this tactical victory provided Abraham Lincoln the political cover he needed to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. -
Battle of Stones River
In late December 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed at the Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, during the American Civil War (1861-65). On December 31, Confederate General Braxton Bragg's 35,000 troops successfully attacked the 42,000-strong Union force commanded by Major General William Rosecrans. Union troops withstood the assault, but retreated to a defensive position, which they would hold against repeated attacks over the next two days. -
Battle of Vicksburg
[Link text](From the spring of 1862 until July 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-65), Union forces waged a campaign to take the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which lay on the east bank of the Mississippi River, halfway between Memphis to the north and New Orleans to the south. The capture of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy and proved the military genius of Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85).) -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. On July 1, the advancing Confederates clashed with the Union’s Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George G. Meade, at the crossroads town of Gettysburg. -
Sherman Begin March to the Sea
After the lost Atlanta, the Confederate army headed west into Tennessee and Alabama, attacking Union supply lines as they went. Sherman was reluctant to set off on a wild goose chase across the South, however, and so he split his troops into two groups. Major General George Thomas took some 60,000 on an offensive march through Georgia to Savannah, "smashing things" (he wrote) " to the sea." -
Appomattox Courthouse
On April 9, 1865, near Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. 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 beleaguered troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. The resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House. -
Lincoln Assassinated
On the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
