civil warusa“Hancock at Gettysburg”: Pickett’s Charge meets the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, 3 July 1863. Chromolithograph after Thure de Thulstrup, L. Prang & Co., 1887; restoration by Adam Cuerden. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
From Lincoln’s election to the end of slavery
Five years, from the November 1860 election that sent the Deep South out of the Union to the December 1865 amendment that ended slavery. The cause of the war was slavery: the seceding states said so in their own declarations, and the Confederacy’s vice-president called it the new nation’s “corner-stone”.
The fighting ranged far beyond Virginia: along the Mississippi and through Tennessee and Georgia, west to Missouri, Arkansas, New Mexico and Texas, and at sea from Hampton Roads to the coast of France. The last Confederate flag came down on a cruiser in Liverpool.
How it is laid out
Campaigns as bands, with the battles fought in them as bars of their own, and the one-day battles and turning points nested inside.
Casualties are killed, wounded, captured and missing on both sides, as the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission estimated them. Other counts differ, sometimes by thousands.
The dead: the traditional count is about 620,000 soldiers. J. David Hacker’s 2011 census-based estimate is about 750,000, within a range of 650,000 to 850,000.
Threads to filter by: battles, maritime, slavery, black soldiers, government and civilians.
Every date is Gregorian. Only Gettysburg is timed to the hour, in UTC: the town ran on local sun time, about five hours behind Greenwich.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. — Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, 4 March 1865
Items
The secession crisis
5 months, 7 days
Lincoln is elected president
Springfield, Illinois
The Deep South secedes
1 month, 13 days
South Carolina secedes
Charleston, South Carolina
South Carolina declares its causes
Charleston, South Carolina
The Confederate States of America
≈ 4 years, 3 months
Jefferson Davis is inaugurated
Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery
Lincoln’s first inaugural address
United States Capitol, Washington
The Cornerstone Speech
Savannah, Georgia
Four years of war
≈ 4 years
Fort Sumter
2 days · Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor
Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers
White House, Washington
The Upper South secedes
1 month, 22 days
A blockade of the Southern coast
White House, Washington
“Contraband of war” at Fort Monroe
Fort Monroe, Virginia
First Bull Run
Henry Hill, Manassas, Virginia
Wilson’s Creek
Wilson’s Creek, Missouri
Fort Donelson
5 days · Fort Donelson, Tennessee
Pea Ridge
2 days · Pea Ridge, Arkansas
Hampton Roads
1 day · Hampton Roads, Virginia
The Virginia sinks the Cumberland
Off Newport News Point, Virginia
The Peninsula campaign
3 months, 16 days · Fort Monroe to Seven Pines, by Yorktown and Williamsburg
Glorieta Pass
2 days · Glorieta Pass, New Mexico
Shiloh
1 day · Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee
Albert Sidney Johnston bleeds to death
Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee
Slavery ends in Washington
White House, Washington
Farragut takes New Orleans
New Orleans levee
Robert Smalls steals the Planter
Southern Wharf, Charleston, past Fort Sumter to the blockading fleet
Robert E. Lee takes command
The Seven Days
6 days · Mechanicsville to Malvern Hill, east of Richmond
Second Bull Run
2 days · Groveton, Manassas, Virginia
The Maryland campaign
16 days · White’s Ford to Shepherdstown, by Frederick, South Mountain and Sharpsburg
The Lost Order
Best farm, near Frederick, Maryland
Harpers Ferry surrenders
Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia)
Antietam
Antietam Creek, Sharpsburg, Maryland
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
White House, Washington
Fredericksburg
4 days · Fredericksburg, Virginia
The stone wall at Marye’s Heights
Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg
The Emancipation Proclamation
White House, Washington
The Vicksburg campaign
3 months, 7 days · Bruinsburg to Vicksburg, by Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson and Champion Hill