1861-1865
United States of America: the Civil War
Anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) was a witty and eloquent speaker. His record as a vote-getter was spotty and in 1856, as a member of the newly founded Republican Party (basically as a result of the split within Whig ranks over slavery), he lost a Senate race to William Douglas, a compromiser on the issue. Douglas was a northern Democrat and the Democratic Party's base was mainly on the south. Ultimately, Lincoln's victory in the election to the presidency (1860) was due to a vote-split between Douglas and two other candidates.
Lincoln had made no secret about wanting to restrict the spread of slavery. Southern states began to secede. Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861 (34th). Lincoln ordered the defense of Fort Sumter (April), in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, when state militias fired on it. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia formed the Confederate States of America, with its capital first in Montgomery, Alabama, and then in Richmond, Virginia. Jefferson Davis was chosen President. The Mason and Dixon line, which is often believed to have divided the north and the south, is actually the straight line separating Pennsylvania from Maryland. West Virginia separated from Virginia and was admitted as a state of the union in 1863 (35th), the same year as Nevada (36th).
1861-1865
Chronoloy of the American Civil War
1861
Order of secession: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, to February; the Confederate capital was in Montgomery, Alabama.
April: Virginia secedes and Richmond becomes the Confederate capital. Tennessee secedes. Missouri remains in the Union.
April-May: The Union secures Baltimore against Confederate attempts to control it.
July: Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard contains Gen. Irvin McDowell in First Bull Run (Manasas).
October: Gen. George McClellan is named commander of all armies in lieu of aging Gen. Winfield Scott.
1862
February: Union forces led by Gen. U.S. Grant capture Fort Donelson, Tennessee; Grant coins "unconditional surrender"; Gen. Henry Halleck head of armies in the west.
March: Beauregard bests Grant at Shiloh and then Grant strikes back at Beauregard. The ironclad warships Monitor (Union) and Merrimac (Confederacy) fight to a stalemate in Hampton Roads, but the blockade of the south holds.
April-May: Adm. David Farragut takes New Orleans.
May: McClellan (Army of the Potomac) initiates peninsular campaign to take Richmond; resisted by generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, who also were maneuvering on Washington (Army of Northern Virginia).
June: Peninsular campaign falters.
July: Halleck head of all armies and Gen. John Pope head of Army of Virginia
August: Pope losses Second Bull Run.
September: McClellan contains Lee at Antietam.
22 September: Emancipation proclamation
November: Lee defeats Gen. Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg.
December 62-January 63: Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg and Union Gen. William Rosecrans are stalemated at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
1863
Gen. Joseph Hooker heads Army of the Potomac in lieu of Burnside.
April: Lee beats Hooker at Chancellorsville.
June-July: Gen. George Meade repulses Lee at Gettysburg. Grant forces Gen. John Pemberton to surrender Vicksburg, Mississippi.
July: New York anti-draft, anti-black riots
September: Rosecrans takes Chattanooga, but Bragg beats Rosecrans at Chickamauga.
November: Gen. George H. Thomas, under Grant's command, defends Chattanooga.
1864
March: Grant commander of all the armies
May: He suffers high casualties at Wilderness from Lee and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Gen. William T. Sherman defeats Johnston in Dalton, Georgia. At Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, Sherman suffers disproportionate loses.
June: Lee foils Grant in Cold Harbor, Virginia; siege of Petersburg, the approaches to Richmond.
July: Lee marches north of Washington to Frederick, but he is held back at Fort Stevens.
August: Farragut blocks Mobile bay. Sherman takes Atlanta.
November: Lincoln is re-elected.
December: Sherman reaches Savannah, Georgia.
1865
January: Gen. Thomas defeats Gen. John Hood at Nashville.
January 31: 13th Amendment abolishing slavery approved.
March 11: Sherman marches to Fayetteville, North Carolina, while Richmond was still resisting the Union siege.
April 1: Gen. Philip H. Sheridan defeats Lee at Five Forks.
April 2: Lee evacuates Richmond in the direction of Danville, southern Virginia.
April 9: Lee surrenders at the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
1863-1890
United States of America: the Indian wars
1861-1941
The Bengali writer and Indian nationalist Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for his vast literary production in 1913.
1863
The Salon des refusés becomes the home of non-academic painters, particularly Manet and the impressionists.
1864
Henri Dunant founds the Red Cross in Geneva on the basis of an international convention for the humane treatment of the wounded in war. The convention was ratified by all major states.
1864-1876
The International Workingman's Association, better known as the First International, was founded in London with the enthusiastic support of Karl Marx. It disintegrated because of international polemics between Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.
1865
The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel demonstrates the heritability of traits in his genetic laws derived through experiments with peas.
Joseph Lister uses carbolic acic as a disinfectant. He created the modern surgery room.
First oil pipeline is built. |