Abraham Lincoln

Where they went

10 related events

1. 1
   1860Election of Lincoln (1860 Presidential Election)key figure

   With the Democrats split between North and South, Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery, swept the Northern states and won the presidency.

2. 2
   1860 – 1861Secession and the Founding of the Confederacyrelated figure

   Beginning with South Carolina, seven Southern states left the Union and in February 1861 founded the Confederate States of America at Montgomery, choosing Jefferson Davis as president.

3. 1861 – 1865American Civil Warkey figure

   A civil war between the North and South, divided over slavery and the Union. The North under Lincoln won, preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

4. 3
   1861Bombardment of Fort Sumterrelated figure

   Confederate guns shelled the federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor for 34 hours and forced its surrender; Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers began the Civil War.

5. 4
   1862Battle of Antietamrelated figure

   McClellan’s Union army stopped Lee’s invasion of the North at Sharpsburg, Maryland; with some 23,000 casualties it was the bloodiest single day in American history.

6. 5
   1862 – 1863Emancipation Proclamationkey figure

   Lincoln declared the enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate areas forever free; freeing the slaves became a war aim, and Black soldiers joined the Union army.

7. 6
   1863Gettysburg Addressauthor

   At the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, Lincoln defined the war in a speech of little more than two minutes as a new birth of freedom and the defence of “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

8. 7
   1865Thirteenth Amendment — Abolition of Slaverykey figure

   Congress passed a constitutional amendment banning slavery and involuntary servitude, which took effect on ratification by the states in December 1865, ending slavery throughout the United States.

9. 8
   1865Assassination of Abraham Lincolnkey figure

   Five days after Lee’s surrender, the Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington; Lincoln died the next morning and Vice President Andrew Johnson became president.

10. 9
    1869First Transcontinental Railroadrelated figure

    Lines built from east and west met at Promontory Summit, Utah, linking the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the United States by rail.

Related works

People who appear alongside

• Jefferson Davis1808 – 1889

  Mississippi politician, former US secretary of war and senator, and the only president of the Confederacy (1861–1865)

• Frederick Douglass1818 – 1895

  Born enslaved in Maryland, he escaped to become the leading abolitionist orator and writer, and recruited Black soldiers for the Union

• Stephen A. Douglas1813 – 1861

  Democratic senator from Illinois who championed popular sovereignty, wrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act and lost the 1860 election to Lincoln

• George B. McClellan1826 – 1885

  Union general who built the Army of the Potomac but was overcautious; he checked Lee at Antietam and lost the 1864 election to Lincoln as the Democratic candidate

• Robert E. Lee1807 – 1870

  Confederate general who led the Army of Northern Virginia to many victories, lost at Gettysburg and surrendered at Appomattox in 1865

• Stonewall Jackson1824 – 1863

  Confederate general who earned the name “Stonewall” at First Bull Run and was mortally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville

• John Wilkes Booth1838 – 1865

  Actor and Confederate sympathiser who shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on 14 April 1865 and was killed by pursuing troops in Virginia twelve days later

Themes this person appears in

• Revolutions and Nation-States1776 – 1871

  From the Declaration of Independence to the German Empire — a century in which liberalism and nationalism toppled the old order in Europe and the Americas and built nation-states

• The American Civil War1850 – 1865

  From the Compromise of 1850 to Lincoln’s assassination — a nation divided over slavery fought four years of civil war, preserving the Union and ending slavery