| 1860-1869 |
Political
and Social History |
Literature |
| 1860 |
27 February. In a speech
at the Cooper Institute in New York, Abraham
Lincoln attacks slavery and insists that the Federal government has
"the power of restraining the extension of the institution."
Abraham Lincoln elected president.
(Image courtesy of American
Treasures page at the Library of Congress.)
South Carolina votes to secede from the Union.
U. S. population: 31,443,321
|
Hamlin
Garland born (d. 1940)
Hawthorne,
The
Marble Faun
Emerson,
Conduct
of Life
Stephens,
Malaeska (first dime
novel) (New URL)
|
| 1861 |
12 April. Attack on Fort Sumter off the coast
of Charleston, South Carolina, signals the beginning of the Civil War.
See
the
"Valley of the Shadow" website for images of two communities during
the Civil War.
20 April. After being offered field command
of the Union forces, Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the U. S.
Army and takes up a commission in the Confederate Army.
21 July. First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas)
provides a decisive victory over Union forces for Confederate Generals
Johnston and Beauregard and their troops. It is in this battle that Confederate
General Thomas J. Jackson earns his nickname--"Stonewall"--for "standing
like a stone wall" against Union troops.
21 October. Union forces defeated at the battle
of Ball's Bluff, Virginia.
1 November. Lincoln replaces general-in-chief
Winfield Scott with George B. McClellan.
|
Harriet
Jacobs (Linda Brent), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Rebecca
Harding Davis, "Life in the Iron Mills"
Holmes publishes his "medical novel" Elsie
Venner
Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride"
James T. Fields, Hawthorne's publisher (Ticknor
and Fields), becomes editor of Atlantic
|
| 1862 |
Robert E. Lee commands the Confederate Armies
of Northern Virginia
16 February. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
captures Ft. Donelson, near Nashville, Tennessee.
6-7 April. Union forces narrowly prevail
at the Battle of Shiloh, but losses on both sides are heavy: the Confederate
army loses 11,000 soldiers and the Union army loses 13,000.
9 August. Stonewall Jackson and his Confederate
forces defeat Union troops at the Battle of Cedar Mountain (Virginia).
22 August. In a letter to Horace Greeley's
New York Tribune, Lincoln writes, "If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
all
the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving
others alone, I would also do that . . . . I have here stated my purpose
according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification
of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could
be free."
30 August. At the Second Battle of Bull
Run (Second Manassas), the combined forces of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall
Jackson, and James Longstreet push Union troops back to Washington.
17 September. Battle of Antietam (Maryland).
In what has been called the single bloodiest day of the war (over 23,000
killed or wounded), McClellan forces Lee to pull back but then does not
follow up this advantage by pursuing Lee's troops.
23 September. Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation is published in newspapers in the North. It frees slaves in
the Confederate states but not those in border states or recaptured territories.
Lincoln signs the Homestead Act allowing citizens
to acquire a parcel of land up to 160 acres after farming it for 5 years.
|
Rebecca
Harding Davis, Margret Howth
Stowe,The
Pearl of Orr's Island
Birth of
Edith Wharton (d. 1937) |
| 1863 |
1 January. The Emancipation Proclamation is signed.
26 January. The governor of Massachusetts
begins to recruit African-American troops, and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers,
the first black regiment, is formed shortly thereafter. By the end
of the war, the Union army will contain 166 all-black regiments composed
of 185,000 soldiers.
3 March. Abraham Lincoln signs the first national
Conscription Act requiring males from ages 20-45 to register for service
in the army. The act allows males to purchase substitutes to take their
place for $300, a clause that allows many wealthy Americans to avoid serving
and led to accusations that this was a "rich man's war but a poor man's
fight."
2-4 May. With heavy losses on both sides (over
10,000 killed), Lee's forces defeat Hooker's Army of the Potomac for a
Southern victory at Chancellorsville, a battle later described in Stephen
Crane's The
Red Badge of Courage (1895).
22 May. Ulysses Grant's troops besiege Vicksburg,
Mississippi.
20 June. West Virginia is admitted to the Union
as a state.
1-3 July. Battle of Gettysburg. Under General
Meade, Northern troops hold their position and deflect Lee's attack.
After the battle, Lee and his troops withdraw to Virginia, but Meade
fails to follow. The South loses 28,000 and the North 23,000
men in three days of fighting.
4 July. Vicksburg surrenders unconditionally
to Ulysses S. Grant, who earns a new nickname: "Unconditional Surrender"
Grant.
13-16 July. Draft
riots erupt in New York City as a predominantly Irish-American mob
protests the drawing of names on July 11 under the Conscription Act .
Widespread lynchings of African Americans and lootings are finally brought
under control by Federal troops. (Read about the draft riots
in the Columbia
Encyclopedia, or go to an extended
day-by-day chronology at Virtual New York)
21 August. Led by Southern sympathizer
William C. Quantrill, a group calling itself "Quantrill's Raiders" invades
Lawrence, Kansas, and kills over 180 civilians.
19-20 September. Battle of Chickamauga
(Georgia). Gen. Bragg's Confederate troops defeat Union forces, which retreat
to Chattanooga. Confederate casualties number 18,000; Union casualties,
16,000.
19 November. Lincoln dedicates the cemetery
at Gettysburg, the occasion of the "Gettysburg Address."
|
Louisa
May Alcott publishes Hospital Sketches about her experiences
as a nurse in a Union hospital.
Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn
Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address"
Thoreau,
Excursions
Hawthorne,Our
Old Home
Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), "The
Man Without a Country"
|
| 1864 |
Lincoln re-elected.
Sand Creek Massacre of Native Americans in Colorado
10 March. Grant is promoted from commander
of the Union forces in the west to commander of the Union armies.
5-6 May.  Battle
of the Wilderness, during which brushfires started by gunfire kill
many wounded.( Image: General Grant and staff on the road
from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia May 7, 1864 courtesy
of American
Treasures page.)
27 June. Confederate forces repel Sherman
at Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia.
5 August. Union naval forces under Admiral
David Farragut successfully attack the key Confederate port of Mobile Bay.
After mines destroy one ship, Farragut continues the assault, yelling
"Damn the torpedoes! Full Speed ahead!"
2 September. Sherman takes Atlanta and, on 16
November, begins his "march to the sea," creating a 40-mile-wide
path of destruction that ends when he reaches Savannah on 22 December.
|
Death of Nathaniel
Hawthorne; he is buried in Concord, Mass.
Locke, The Naseby Papers |
| 1865 |
4 February. Robert E. Lee is promoted to
commander-in-chief of the Confederate army.
17-18 February. Columbia and Charleston,
South Carolina, fall to Union forces.
22 February. Wilmington, North Carolina, the
last remaining southern port, is captured.
1 April. Sheridan repels a Confederate
assault at the Battle of the Five Forks (Virginia), the last major battle
of the war.
3 April. Union forces take Richmond, the
capital of the Confederacy; two days later, Lincoln visits the site.
8 April. Civil War officially ends when Lee surrenders
to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
13 April. The Union begins disbanding its
forces. Senate records later showed that the Union had enlisted 2,324,516
soldiers, of whom 360,000 were killed; the Confederacy had about a million
soldiers, of whom 260,000 were killed.
14 April. While watching Our American Cousin
at Ford's Theater, Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth and dies the following
day.
Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery.
One of the worst steamship disasters in American
history occurs as the
Sultana blows up on the Mississippi, killing
1700 people, mostly returning Union soldiers.
|
Mark
Twain, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
Walt
Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"; Drum-Taps
Louisa
May Alcott, Moods
Birth of Sui-Sin
Far (Edith Maude Eaton) (d. 1914)
|
| 1866 |
13-27 July . Atlantic
cable is completed.
30 April. Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill
of 1866.
First appearance of a 5-cent coin, soon called
"the nickel."
The Sioux nations are angered as the US Army
begins building forts along the Bozeman Trail, an important route to the
gold fields of Virginia City; Capt. Fetterman and 80 soldiers are killed.
|
Melville,
Battle-Pieces
and Aspects of the War (poems)
John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound
Emerson,
"Terminus"
Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker; or, The Silver
Skates
The
Galaxy (New York), 1866-1878, was founded to counter the limitations
of The Atlantic Monthly. Among its contributors were Mark Twain,
Henry James, Rose Terry Cooke, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Walt Whitman.
|
| 1867 |
31 January. All males over 21 are granted suffrage
in US territories
2 March. First Reconstruction Act passed over
the president's veto; the second is passed on March 23.
30 March. Secretary of State Seward purchases
Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. Congressional critics
call this "Seward's Folly."
17 July. Congress passes the Third Reconstruction
Act over a presidential veto. Instead of a majority calculated from
the number of registered voters, only a majority vote by those voting
will be necessary to confirm ratification and readmission of states.
Nebraska becomes the 37th state to join the US.
An American era begins as Jesse Chisholm maps
the Chisholm trail, one of several routes over which cowboys drive cattle
from Texas to the railheads of Kansas City, Cheyenne, Dodge City, and Abilene.
|
George Washington Harris, Sut Lovingood Yarns
William
Dean Howells, Venetian Life
John W. DeForest, Miss Ravenel's Conversion
from Secession to Loyalty
Augusta Evans, St. Elmo
Emerson,
May-Day
and Other Poems
Elizabeth Stoddard, Temple House
Mark
Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calveras County and Other
Sketches
Bret
Harte, Condensed Novels and Other Papers
|
| 1868 |
Fourteenth Amendment grants full citizenship
to all (including African Americans) born in the US except Native Americans.
13 March-6 May. Impeachment trial of President
Andrew Johnson ends in his acquittal.
Ulysses S. Grant and his vice-presidential candidate,
Schuyler Colfax, are elected by a landslide.
Custer moves against Chief Black Kettle, destroying
an Indian village and all its inhabitants.
|
Louisa
May Alcott, Little Women
Bret
Harte, "The Luck of Roaring Camp"
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, The Gates Ajar
Mary Jane Holmes, The Guardian Angel
Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick
Lippincott's Magazine (Philadelphia),
1868-1916
Overland
Monthly (San Francisco), 1868-1875; 1883-1935, publisher of Jack
London, among others. |
| 1869 |
Ulysses S. Grant becomes president (1869-77).
10 May. Union Pacific-Central Pacific transcontinental
railroad is completed as the two lines meet at Promontory Point, Utah.
Wyoming passes first woman's suffrage act.
Susan B. Anthony elected president of the American
Equal Rights Association.
Number of justices on the Supreme Court rises
from 7 to 9.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton elected president of the
National Woman Suffrage Association, which demands federal voting rights
for women.
First Sioux War ends with the Treaty of Fort
Laramie; the US agrees to abandon Forts Smith, Kearney, and Reno.
24 September. Earlier in the year, Jay Gould
and Jay Fisk attempted to drive up the price of gold and corner the market.
On this day, "Black Friday," President Grant releases $4 million
and drives the price down, an action that causes a stock-market panic.
|
Mark
Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Louisa
May Alcott, Good Wives (Little Women II)
Stowe,
Oldtown
Folks
Harte,
"Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"
Appleton's
Journal (New York), 1869-1881, publisher of Constance
Fenimore Woolson, among others.
|
