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1860-1869 |
Political and
Social History |
Literature |
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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
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Hamlin
Garland born (d. 1940)
Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
Emerson,
Conduct of Life
Stephens,
Malaeska (first
dime novel)
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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.
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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
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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.
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Rebecca
Harding Davis, Margret Howth
Stowe,The
Pearl of Orr's Island
Birth of
Edith Wharton (d. 1937)
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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
comprised of 185,000 soldiers.
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.
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."
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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"
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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.
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Death of
Nathaniel Hawthorne; he is buried in Concord, Mass.
Locke, The Naseby Papers
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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.
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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)
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1866 |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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"
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, The Gates
Ajar
Appleton's
Journal (New York), 1869-1881, publisher of
Constance Fenimore Woolson, among others.
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