THE WORLD ATLAS

War · 12 April 1861 – 26 May 1865

American Civil War

Decades of conflict over slavery and its spread into the western territories came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery, won the presidential election of 1860. South Carolina seceded in December, and in February 1861 seceding slave states formed the Confederate States of America.

The war began when Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter in April 1861. Early Confederate victories in Virginia showed the war would be long, while Union armies advanced along the rivers of the West. After Antietam in 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made the end of slavery a Union war aim and opened the army to Black soldiers. In July 1863 the Union won at Gettysburg and took Vicksburg, splitting the Confederacy. Ulysses S. Grant pressed Robert E. Lee in Virginia while William T. Sherman took Atlanta and marched to the sea. Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865, days before Lincoln was assassinated, and slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.

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Dates
12 April 1861 – 26 May 1865
Casualties
Estimates of soldiers' deaths range from about 620,000 to 700,000 or more, most of them from disease, plus an undetermined number of civilian deaths.

The sides

Union

Confederacy

Timeline of the American Civil War

  1. Seceding states meet to form the Confederate States of America

    After Lincoln's election, South Carolina's convention voted unanimously to secede on 20 December 1860, and six more Deep South states followed. On 4 February 1861 their delegates met at Montgomery, Alabama, agreed to form the Confederate States of America, and chose Jefferson Davis as president. The new government began seizing federal forts and arsenals within its borders, while the outgoing administration in Washington hesitated.

  2. Confederates bombard Fort Sumter: the war begins

    Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour, was one of the few federal posts in the South still held by US troops. When Lincoln announced he would send supplies, Confederate batteries opened fire on 12 April, and the garrison surrendered the next day. Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion, and four more slave states, including Virginia, then joined the Confederacy, which moved its capital to Richmond.

  3. First Battle of Bull Run: a Confederate victory near Washington

    Under pressure for a quick advance on Richmond, a Union army under Irvin McDowell attacked Confederates under P. G. T. Beauregard near Manassas, Virginia. Confederate reinforcements arrived by rail, and the Union army retreated in disorder towards Washington. It was the first major battle of the war, and it showed both sides that the war would be long and costly. Lincoln called for 500,000 more volunteers.

  4. Grant captures Fort Donelson in Tennessee

    In the western theatre, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant, supported by river gunboats, captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and then besieged Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, which surrendered with its garrison on 16 February. The victories opened Tennessee to Union armies, led to the fall of Nashville and made Grant a national figure. Grant's demand for 'unconditional surrender' earned him a nickname matching his initials.

  5. Battle of Shiloh: a shockingly costly Union victory

    Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston surprised Grant's army at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River on 6 April. Johnston was killed that afternoon, and with reinforcements overnight the Union counterattacked on 7 April and drove the Confederates south. Nearly 24,000 men were killed, wounded or missing, more than in any earlier American battle. In late April a Union fleet also captured New Orleans.

  6. Battle of Antietam halts Lee's first invasion of the North

    After victories in Virginia, Robert E. Lee led the Confederate army into Maryland. George B. McClellan's Union army attacked it along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg on 17 September, in what remains the bloodiest single day in American military history. Lee withdrew to Virginia. The Union success gave Lincoln the moment to announce, five days later, his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. About 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing.

  7. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation

    Lincoln's proclamation declared that people held as slaves in the states in rebellion were free. It did not apply to the loyal border states or to Confederate areas already under Union control, and its promise depended on Union victory. But it made ending slavery a Union war aim, discouraged Britain and France from recognising the Confederacy, and opened the Union Army and Navy to Black men; almost 200,000 served by the war's end.

  8. Battle of Chancellorsville: Lee's boldest victory

    Joseph Hooker's much larger Union army crossed the Rappahannock to outflank Lee. Lee divided his army and sent Stonewall Jackson on a march around the Union right, which collapsed under a surprise attack. Hooker withdrew across the river. The victory was costly: Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men's fire. Encouraged, Lee decided to invade the North again. Lee lost fewer men than Hooker, but the Confederacy could less afford its losses.

  9. Battle of Gettysburg: Lee's invasion of the North fails

    Lee's army met George Meade's Union army at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Over three days the Confederates attacked the Union line on the hills south of the town, ending with the failed assault on the centre known as Pickett's Charge. Gettysburg was the war's costliest battle, with more American soldier casualties than the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 combined. Lee retreated to Virginia and never again invaded the North in force.

  10. Vicksburg surrenders: the Union controls the Mississippi

    Vicksburg, on its bluffs above the river, was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. Grant besieged it from 18 May, and Pemberton's starving garrison surrendered on 4 July, the day after Gettysburg ended. Port Hudson fell on 9 July, giving the Union the whole river and cutting off Texas, Arkansas and western Louisiana from the rest of the Confederacy.

  11. Sherman captures Atlanta

    In 1864 Grant, now commanding all Union armies, attacked Lee in Virginia while William T. Sherman advanced from Tennessee on Atlanta, a vital rail and supply centre. After months of manoeuvre and battles, Atlanta fell on 2 September. With the war in Virginia stalled in costly trench fighting around Petersburg, the victory boosted Northern morale and helped Lincoln win re-election that November.

  12. Sherman begins his March to the Sea

    Leaving Atlanta in flames, Sherman's army of about 62,000 men cut loose from its supply lines and marched across Georgia, living off the land. Foragers seized food and livestock and the troops wrecked about 300 miles of railroad, factories and farms. Historians debate whether this 'hard war' amounted to total war, but it crippled the Confederate economy and morale. Sherman faced little organised resistance along the way.

  13. Sherman reaches the sea and takes Savannah

    Sherman's army captured the port of Savannah on 21 December after a march of over a month, and he offered it to Lincoln as a Christmas present. In early 1865 he turned north through the Carolinas, squeezing the Confederacy from the south as Grant held Lee in Virginia. The march showed that the Confederacy could not protect its own heartland, and desertion from Confederate armies grew as soldiers worried about their families at home.

  14. Battle of Five Forks breaks the siege of Petersburg

    For more than nine months Grant had besieged Lee's army in trenches around Petersburg, the rail centre protecting Richmond. On 1 April Union troops under Philip Sheridan routed Confederates at Five Forks, cutting one of Lee's last supply lines. The next day Grant attacked all along the line, and Lee told President Davis that Richmond must be abandoned. Petersburg fell on the night of 2 to 3 April.

  15. Richmond falls to Union troops

    The Confederate government fled Richmond on 2 April, and retreating troops set fire to supplies, burning much of the city. Union troops entered the capital on 3 April. Lee's remaining army retreated west, hoping to join Confederate forces in North Carolina. For many Black Americans in the city, Union troops' arrival meant the end of slavery. The fall of the capital, which the Union had sought to capture since 1861, signalled that the Confederacy's end was near. Lee's army now had only days to run.

  16. Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House

    Cut off and short of food, Lee's army was surrounded near Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee met Grant in a private house and surrendered on 9 April on generous terms: his men were paroled and allowed to go home, officers keeping their side arms and soldiers who owned horses keeping them. Other Confederate forces surrendered over the following weeks, and the war is usually dated as ending in May 1865.

  17. President Lincoln is assassinated

    Five days after Appomattox, Abraham Lincoln was shot by the actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, and he died the next morning. Vice President Andrew Johnson became president and faced the task of rebuilding the Union. The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, was ratified in December 1865. Booth was cornered and killed in Virginia twelve days later.

Related

Other wars of the time

Sources