istoryworld
Events relating to north america
The three-day Battle of Gettysburg, inconclusive but more damaging to the Confederates, brings casualties on both sides of more than 50,000
After a six-week siege the city of Vicksburg surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the entire Mississippi under Union control
Four days of riots in New York greet Lincoln's new conscription or draft laws, with exemptions for the rich
The Seventh-day Adventists become an organized church, with a first General Conference in Battle Creek, Michigan
President Lincoln, in honouring the Union dead at Gettysburg, captures in three minutes the essence of American democracy
Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman become Lincoln's two leading generals in the final thrust of the Civil War
Grant moves south in a hard-fought campaign to pin down Lee's Confederate army at Petersburg, near Richmond
The Federal government confiscates the Arlington estate of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and turns it into a war cemetery
William Tecumseh Sherman captures Atlanta, the first important southern city to fall into Union hands
President Lincoln is re-elected for a second term, thanks largely to recent Union successes on the Civil War battlefields
William T. Sherman reaches the coast and captures Savannah, after his violently destructive 'march to the sea'
The Confederate government abandons Richmond, and Lee begins a retreat to the west
Lincoln visits the Confederate capital at Richmond and is greeted by a jubilant crowd of freed slaves
Lee surrenders to Grant at the Appomattox Court House, and is offered conciliatory terms
Samuel Clemens, writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain, has immediate success with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
On a visit to a Washington theatre, Lincoln is assassinated in his box by John Wilkes Booth
Vice-president Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, becomes president on the death of Republican Abraham Lincoln
The southern states pass new Black Codes, designed to limit the freedom granted to African-Americans by the victorious north
The Plains Indians are threatened by settlers pressing west, building railways and slaughtering buffalo
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits slavery or any 'involuntary servitude' in the USA
The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan is founded at Pulaski, in Tennessee, on Christmas Eve
A Civil Rights Act is passed by the US Congress, guaranteeing the legal rights of African-Americans
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US constitution (not ratified till 1868) assures equal rights as citizens to all born or naturalized in the USA
Walt Whitman laments the assassinated President Lincoln in his poem 'O Captain! My Captain!', published in Sequel to Drum-Taps
US painter Winslow Homer makes his name with the exhibition of a Civil War subject, Prisoners from the Front
