CWTimeLine

Taken from
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Civil War":
The Compact Chronology of the Civil War!

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1860

November 6: Lincoln elected.
December 20: South Carolina is first state to secede.

1861

April 13: Fort Sumter surrenders.
July 21: First Battle of Bull Run ends in a Union rout.
November 1: Winfield Scott replaced by George B. McClellan as Union general-in-chief.
November 8: Capt. Wilkes seizes Confederate envoys Mason and Slidell, triggering the Trent Affair.

1862

February 16: Fort Donelson falls to Ulysses S. Grant
March 9: Monitor and Merrimac battle, ushering in a new era in naval warfare.
April 4: McClellan begins Peninsular Campaign/advance on Richmond.
April 6: Grant takes heavy casualties at Shiloh, Tennessee.
April 25: Flag Officer David Farragut, USN, capture New Orleans.
May 23-25: Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson defeats Union forces at Front Royal and Winchester,
                  Virginia, during his Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
June 25-July 1: McClellan and Robert E. Lee fight the Seven Days' Battles in Virginia.
August 29-30: Jackson and James Longstreet defeay Pope at Second Bull Run.
September 5: Lee invades Maryland.
September 17: McClellan gains a narrow victory at Antietam, Maryland.
September 22 and January 1, 1863: Lincoln issues Preliminary and Final Emancipation Proclamations.
December 13: Lee defeats Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

1863

January 23-26: Burnside bogs down in the "Mud March" and is replaced by "Fighting Joe" Hooker.
May 2: "Stonewall" Jackson routs Hooker at Chancellorsville, but Jackson is mortally wounded by
            friendly fire.
July 1-3: Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is turning point of the war; Lee retreats from his
               invasion of the North.
July 4: Vicksburg, Mississippi, falls to U.S. Grant.
July 13-16: Draft riots sweep New York City.
October 19-20: Federal forces are defeated at Chickamauga.
November 23-25: Thomas, Hooker, and Sherman defeat Bragg at the Battles of Chattanooga and
                           Lookout Mountain.

1864

March 12: U.S. Grant becomes general-in-chief of the Union armies.
May 6: Grant takes heavy casualties at the Wilderness (Virginia), but advances towards Richmond.
May 6: Sherman commences the Atlanta Campaign against Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee.
May 10-20: Grant and Lee fight at Spotsylvania, Virginia.
June 3: Grant suffers heavy casualties at Cold Harbor, Virginia.
June 15: Grant moves south of Richmond and starts the nine-month siege of Petersburg.
June 19: The Confederate commere raider Alabama is sunk by USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg, France.
July 12: Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early unsuccessfully attacks Washington, D.C.
July 20-September 2: The Battle of Peachtree Creek opens Sherman's assault on Atlanta. Atlanta is
                                  evacuated on September 1, after which Sherman occupies the city.
November 8: Lincoln is reelected, with Andrew Johnson as vice president.
November 15: Leaving much of Atlanta in flames, Sherman begins his March to the Sea.
December 15: Confederate General John B. Hood is defeated by Maj. Gen. George Thomas at Nashville.
December 21: Sherman takes Savannah, Georgia, offering it to Lincoln as a "Christmas present."

1865

January 31: Congress submits to the states the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.
February 17: Sherman takes Columbia, capital of South Carolina.
April 1-2: Philip Sheridan defeats Confederate Major General George Pickett at Five Forks, Virginia,
                enabling Grant to break through the Confederate lines after a nine-month siege.
April 2-4: The Confederate government flees Richmond, the Union army marches into the city, and
                Lincoln visits the rebel capital.
April 9: Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
April 14-15: John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln, who dies the next morning.
April 18: Johnston surrenders to Sherman outside Raleigh, North Carolina.
May 10: Confederate President Jefferson Davis is captured at Irwinsville, Georgia.
May 26: Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders Confederate troops west of the Mississippi, thereby
              ending the war.