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Abraham Lincoln has been elected the sixteenth president of the United States, who is dedicated to abolishing slavery.

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Representatives of seceded states meet in Montgomery, Alabama, and form the Confederate States of America. They elected Jefferson Davis as president. The CSA ensures the extension of slavery into other states and territories.

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The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, a federal outpost in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, marks the first military engagement of the American Civil War.

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The First Battle of Bull Run, or the First Battle of Manassas, takes place near Manassas in northern Virgina and ends in a Confederate rout of Union forces.

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In a fierce battle at Shiloh, in southwestern Tennessee, Union forces rally from almost near defeat to drive back the Confederate army. Both sides are in a stalemate for the next three weeks because of the heavy casualties, including more than 13,000 on the Union side and more than 11,000 on the Confederate side.

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The battle at Antietam, Maryland, is regarded as a Union victory in an otherwise bleak year for Union forces in the East. However, the casualties set a grisly record. in what marks the bloodiest single day of the war, the South loses 10,316 troops, and the North suffers casualties of 12,401.

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Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. It states that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” The proclamation also allows black men to serve in the Union army.

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In the western theater of the war, General Ulysses S. Grant lays siege to the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Confederates surrender on July 4. The victory leaves the Mississippi River completely under Union control and splits the Confederacy in half.

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General William T. Sherman captures Atlanta, Georgia. Sherman adopts a strategy of “total war” on his march through Georgia and the Carolinas. His troops destroy crops, supplies, railroads, bridges, and many small industries to weaken support for the war.

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On April 14 President Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth. The president dies on April 15. Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes president. The death of Lincoln will make reconciliation between the North and South more difficult.