1863 January 25th .Joseph Hooker replaces 1st .Emancipation Proclamation: Burnside as commander, Army of “That on the first day of January, in the the Potomac year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free …” February 25th .National Bank Act March 3rd .Conscription Act and new Habeas Corpus Act April 30th–May 6th .Union defeat at Chancellorsville May 1st–18th .Ulysses S. Grant in 5th .Arrest of radical peace Democrat, Mississippi Clement Laird Vallandigham 10th .Death of “Stonewall” Jackson June 3rd .Lee moves north 20th .West Virginia admitted as separate 15th .Lee and Army of Northern state into the Union Virginia cross Potomac 28th .George Meade replaces Hooker as commander, Army of the Potomac
Timeline victory at Gettysburg 13th–16th.New York draft riots (Pennsylvania) 4th.Vicksburg surrender to Grant 13th–14th.Lee retreats back across Potomac 18th.Attack on Fort Wagner (Charleston)/Massachusetts 24th.Death of Robert Gould Shaw AugustSeptember8th.Fall of Fort Wagner to Union September–November.Jefferson Davis 19th–20th.Bragg defeats Rosecrans setback in congressional elections atChickamauga October17th.Ulysses S. Grant appointed Union commander in west October–November.Local and state elections see Republican recovery November24th–25th.Union victory at 19th.Lincoln gives “Gettysburg Address” Chattanooga at dedication ceremony for cemetery December8th.Lincoln’s proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction proposals
1864JanuaryLincoln and Congress debate reconstruction February17thHunley(Confederate New tax law. New law on impressment of submarine) sinks USS Housatonicslaves. Renewed authority to suspend habeascorpusMarch9th.Grant becomes general-in-chief of Union armies April8th.Union defeated atSabine Cross 16th.Alexander Stephens addresses Georgia Roads/Mansfi eld (Louisiana); end of legislature; attacks Davis’s administration’s Red River expedition record on civil liberties and conduct of war 12th.Fort Pillow massacre May5th–6th.Battle of the Wilderness June1st–3rd.Battle of Coldharbor 7th.Baltimore Convention: Lincoln 14th–16th.Grant moves south of renominated, Andrew Johnson selected James river as vice-presidential candidate 15th–18th.Beginning of siege of Petersburg 27th.Sherman defeated at Kenesaw mountain
Timeline vetoes Wade–Davis Bill threatens Washington 17th .John Bell Hood replaces Johnston as commander at Atlanta 30th .Battle of the Crater (Petersburg): Union defeat August 5th .Union navy victorious at 29th .Democrats nominate McClellan Mobile Bay as their presidential candidate September 2nd .Fall of Atlanta to Sherman’s forces 19th–22nd .Union victories at Opequon Creek and Fisher’s Hill (Shenandoah valley) October 19th .Union victory at Cedar Creek (Shenandoah valley) 23rd .Union victory at Westport (Missouri) November 15th–16th .Sherman begins his 8th .Reelection of Lincoln “March to the Sea” 30th .John Bell Hood defeated at Franklin (Tennessee)
December15th–16th.Hood defeated at Nashville 21st.Fall of Savannah (to Sherman) 1865January15th.Union captures Fort Fisher 31st.Thirteenth Amendment passed: (North Carolina) abolishes slavery. Section1. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction.” Section2. “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” February1st.Sherman begins to move up 3rd.Conference at Hampton Roads through Carolinas 6th.Lee appointed commander-in-chief of17th.destruction of Columbia Confederate armies (South Carolina). Confederate evacuation of Charleston March21st–23rd.Sherman meets up with 4th.Lincoln’s second inauguration and 7th.Confederate Congress: Second Congress, Schofield in North Carolina Second Inaugural Address: “With malice Second Session, Senate, March 7: toward none; with charity for all; with “The Congress of the Confederate States of firmness in the right, as God gives us to America do enact: That in order to provide seethe right, let us strive onto finish the additional forces to repel invasion, maintain the work we are into bind up the nation’s rightful possession of the Confederate States,
Timeline care for him who shall have secure their independence and preserve their borne the battle, and for his widow, and institutions, the President be and he is hereby his orphan .” authorized to ask for and accept from the owners of slaves the services of such number of able-bodied negro men as he may deem expedient, for and during the war, to perform military service in whatever capacity he may direct.” (“The Negro Soldier Question,” SouthernHistoricalSocietyPapers52, 1959, pp. 452–7) 13th.Congress authorizes recruitment of slaves April2nd.Fall of Petersburg 14th–15th.Lincoln assassinated by 10th.Lee bids farewell to the Army of Northern 3rd.Fall of Richmond John Wilkes Booth Virginia: “After four years of arduous service, 9th.Lee surrenders toGrant at 26th.Booth shot and killed marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, Appomattox Court House the Army of Northern Virginia has been 26th.Joseph E. Johnston surrenders compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers (North Carolina) and resources.” May26th.Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders 23rdand24th.Grand Review of the Army 10th.Davis captured at Irwinville (Georgia) (trans-Mississippi). War officially 23rd.Army of the Potomac in terminates Washington, DC 24th.Army of Georgia in Washington, DC
Guide to Further ReadingSUSAN-MARY GRANTCivil War Origins and General Works on the WarGeneral works covering the war in its entirety vary between the long and involved (and involving, the short and sharp, and the still shorter but perhaps less geared toward the general reader, being aimed primarily at a school or college curriculum that requires simply the basic facts of, say, the Compromise of 1850. The most comprehensive treatment of the war remains Allan Nevins’s eight-volume study Ordeal of the Union (New York: Collier Books, 1947–71), although the popular trilogy by Shelby Foote, The Civil War A Narrative (New York Random House, 1958–74) is perhaps more readily available these days. Of the single-volume studies of the war, the more substantial includes Peter J. Parish, The American Civil War (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), James M. McPherson’s Ordeal by Fire The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) and his prizewinning Battle Cry of Freedom The Civil War Era (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, now available in Penguin) and, in the first of a two-volume study, Brian Holden Reid, America’s Civil War The Operational Battlefield, 1861–1863 (London: Prometheus Books, With its focus on the military side of the conflict, David J. Eicher’s The LongestNight: A Military History of the Civil War (New York Simon & Schuster, London Pimlico, 2002) is packed with information on battles and weaponry as well as the individuals involved. Shorter studies of the war itself and the Civil War era more broadly include Susan-Mary Grant, The War fora Nation The American Civil War (New York Routledge, 2006), Robert Cook, Civil War America Making
a Nation, 1848–1877 (London: Longman, 2003), William R. Brock, Conflictand Transformation The United States, 1844–1877 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), William L. Barney, Battleground for the Union The Era of theCivil War and Reconstruction, 1848–1877 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice- Hall, 1990), and Adam Smith, The American Civil War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Useful studies that adopt a particular focus in order to get at the heart of the Civil War include Phillip S. Paludan, “A People’sContest”: The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865 (New York Harper & Row, Charles Royster’s, The Destructive War William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (1991, repr. New York Random House, and Charles P. Roland, An American Iliad The Story of the Civil War(New York and London McGraw-Hill, 1991), while a more comparative approach is adopted in Brian Holden Reid, The American Civil War and the Wars of the Industrial Revolution (London: Cassell, 1999). A longer textbook treatment of the war is provided by David Herbert Donald, Jean Harvey Baker, and Michael F. Holt in The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York and London WW. Norton, 2001), whilst basic short/seminar studies of the war include the useful Access to History series by Alan Farmer, available in various editions now, including The American Civil War and its Origins, 1848–1865 (London: Hodder Murray, 2006), The American CivilWar, 1861–1865 (2002), and Reconstruction and the Results of the AmericanCivil War, 1865–1877 (1997). Most of the studies above cover the Civil War’s origins, but there are many valuable works that focus on the causes of the war, specifically. The standard, and still most valuable for its political detail, remains David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York Harper & Row, 1976) but see also Brian Holden Reid, The Origins of the American Civil War (Harlow: Longman, 1996). Older and still useful studies include Avery Craven, TheComing of the Civil War (2nd edn. Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press, 1957), and more recent ones Richard H. Sewell, A House Divided:Sectionalism and the Civil War (Baltimore, MD Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), James A. Rawley, Race and Politics Bleeding Kansas and the Coming of the Civil War (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969), Gerald W. Wolff, The Kansas–Nebraska Bill Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York Revisionist Press, 1980), James L. Huston, The Panic of1857 and the Coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana State University Press, 1987), Kenneth M. Stampp, 1857: A Nation on the Brink(New York Oxford University Press, 1990), and Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free The Roots of Civil War (New York Hill & Wang, 1992; rev. edn. 2005). 364• Guide to Further Reading
WWWWilliam G. Thomas and Alice E. Carter, The Civil War on the Web A Guideto the Very Best Sites (Wilmington, DE Scholarly Resources, 2001, remains valuable, as many of the sites that are of interest to both serious scholar and general reader are stable. In terms of access to primary sources for the antebellum through Reconstruction periods, the Making of America and the Library of Congress are good places to start. The Making of America site offers access to, among other things, through Cornell University the Official Records of the War ofthe Rebellion (Washington, DC Government Printing Office, and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of theRebellion (Washington, DC Government Printing Office, In addition, the University of Virginia hosts several excellent sites for students of American history generally for the Civil War specifically, Edward Ayers’s “Valley of the Shadow website, providing access to records, diaries, census information, newspapers, church records, and maps from two counties on opposite sides of the sectional divide Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. There is an accompanying monograph Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863 (New York WW. Norton, 2003). This is a marvelous resource, in terms of both ease of use and the range of material on offer. Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html. The Making of America (MOA): http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrp/. Official Records of the War of the Rebellion: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion: http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/ofre.html. Valley of the Shadow http://jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU/vshadow/. Share with your friends: |