Major Events of the Civil War 1861 - 1865

Firing on Fort Sumter (1861)

• On April 12, 1861 the Rebels bombarded Fort Sumter, a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The Civil War begins.

The North’s Advantages

• The North doubles the population of the South.

• 90% of all manufacturing is in the North.• Better transportation, like the railroad.• President Lincoln

The South’s Advantages

• Home field advantage - the South is fighting for their way of life.

• The South has better military leadership, like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

The Battle of Antietam

• In the state of Maryland, a Union State and border state, Robert E. Lee invades the North with his Army of Northern Virginia and takes on the Army of the Potomac.

• It will be the bloodiest single-day battle of the war with 22,717 dead, wounded or missing.

• Considered a Union victory because Lee retreated.

Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation

• After the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln frees the Slaves in the South called the Emancipation Proclamation.

• The war is no longer about preserving the Union, but to set the slaves free.

• Lincoln also grants African-Americans to become soldiers, and fight against South. The 54th Massachusetts Regiment becomes the first African-American regiment to fight.

• William Carney is the first black soldier to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Battle of Gettysburg

• From July 1 to July 3, 1863, 92, 000 Union troops fought 76, 000 Confederates at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

• It was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War with 51, 000 dead, wounded, or missing.

• It was a major victory for the North. It turned the tide of the war in favor of the North. The South would never take the offensive again.

The Gettysburg Address

• Lincoln said that the Civil War was about a “new birth of freedom”, and that “all men are created equal”.

The Siege of Vicksburg (1863)

• The Union takes control of Vicksburg, Mississippi, thus controlling the Mississippi River.

• Vicksburg = Mississippi River• Ulysses S. Grant (Lincoln’s Butcher) is

promoted Commander of all Union Forces.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address 1865

• “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.”

Con’t

• “Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Con’t

• “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Con’t

• Lincoln denounces slavery as an evil.• He blames the South for trying to destroy the

Union.• The War will continue until slavery ceases to

exist.

Lee Surrenders

• On April 9th, 1865, Robert E. Lee and the South surrenders to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The War is over.

Assassination of Lincoln

• On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln dies the next morning.

…by the better angels of our nature…