A federal fort in Charleston harbour shelled into surrender in April 1861, the war's opening act (12–13 April 1861)
Major Robert Anderson surrendered after 34 hours; no one was killed in the bombardment.
History · Revolutions & empires
The American Civil War
1861–1865
Union and Confederacy fight over secession and slavery
Eleven southern states seceded after Lincoln's election and fired on a federal fort in Charleston harbour in April 1861. Four years of the first industrial war followed, fought with railways, ironclads and rifled muskets, and costing more American lives than any other conflict. Emancipation turned a war for the Union into a war against slavery; the surrender at a Virginia courthouse in April 1865 settled secession for good, days before the president was shot in a Washington theatre.
How to spot them
- ▸A fort in Charleston harbour shelled in April 1861; eleven states in a new confederacy with its capital at Richmond
- ▸Blue and grey; a naval blockade called the Anaconda Plan; the bloodiest single day in American history at a Maryland creek
- ▸A two-minute speech at a cemetery dedication beginning 'Four score and seven years ago'
- ▸Ends with a surrender in a parlour at a Virginia courthouse, not with a treaty
What happened
A duel between two ironclads at Hampton Roads that made every wooden navy obsolete overnight (9 March 1862)
USS Monitor against CSS Virginia, the rebuilt USS Merrimack; the battle was a draw.
The bloodiest single day in American history, beside a Maryland creek in September 1862 (17 September 1862)
About 22,700 casualties; the check to Lee gave Lincoln the moment to announce emancipation.
The proclamation that took effect on the first day of 1863, declaring enslaved people in rebel states free (1 January 1863)
It applied only to areas still in rebellion; the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 ended slavery outright.
Three days in Pennsylvania in July 1863, ending with a doomed charge across open ground (1–3 July 1863)
Pickett's Charge broke on Cemetery Ridge; Lee never invaded the North again.
A 272-word dedication speech beginning 'Four score and seven years ago' (19 November 1863)
Edward Everett spoke for two hours beforehand; Lincoln's remarks lasted about two minutes.
A march from Atlanta to the sea that cut a sixty-mile swathe of destruction through Georgia (November–December 1864)
Sherman presented Savannah to Lincoln as a Christmas gift.
A surrender in Wilmer McLean's parlour on Palm Sunday 1865 (9 April 1865)
Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on generous terms.
Quick-fire facts
- •The war began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861 and effectively ended with Lee's surrender on 9 April 1865
- •Abraham Lincoln led the Union; Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States, with its capital moved to Richmond
- •Ulysses S. Grant became Union general-in-chief in 1864; Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia
- •Estimates of the dead range from about 620,000 to as many as 750,000, more than in all other American wars combined until Vietnam
- •Vicksburg fell on 4 July 1863, the day after Gettysburg ended, splitting the Confederacy along the Mississippi
- •Around 180,000 African American soldiers served in the United States Colored Troops
- •The 54th Massachusetts, led by Robert Gould Shaw, assaulted Fort Wagner in July 1863 — the subject of the film Glory
- •Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on 14 April 1865 and died the next morning
- •There was no peace treaty; the Confederacy was never recognised as a state, so its armies simply surrendered
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- American Battlefield Trust — The Civil War
- National Park Service — Civil War
- U.S. National Archives — The Emancipation Proclamation