Timeline 1861 Flashcards
Star of the West, an unarmed merchant vessel secretly carrying federal troops and supplies to Fort Sumter, is fired upon by South Carolina artillery at the entrance to Charleston harbor.
January 9, 1861
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas follow South Carolina’s lead and secede from the Union.
January 9–February 1
Kansas is admitted as a state with a constitution prohibiting slavery.
January 29
Delegates from six seceded states meet in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a government and elect Jefferson Davis President of the Confederate States of America.
February
Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the sixteenth President of the United States.
March 4
Fort Sumter is bombarded and surrenders to South Carolina troops led by P. G. T. Beauregard.
April 12–13
Lincoln declares a state of insurrection and calls for 75,000 volunteers to enlist for three months of service.
April 15
April 17–May 20
Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina secede from the Union.
April 17–May 20
Lincoln orders a blockade of all Confederate ports.
April 19
Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army.
April 20
Union troops cross the Potomac River from Washington and capture Alexandria, Virginia, and vicinity. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth is killed by a local innkeeper and is the first officer to die in the war. He becomes a martyr for the North.
May 24
Richmond becomes the capital of the Confederacy.
May 29
Confederate forces win a victory at the First Battle of Manassas. Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson earns the nickname “Stonewall” for his tenacity in the battle.
July 21
George B. McClellan, thirty-four, replaces the aging Winfield Scott as general-in-chief of the Union armies.
November 1
The Union navy seizes Confederate commissioners to Great Britain and France—James A. Mason and John Slidell—from the British steamer Trent, inflaming tensions between the United States and Great Britain.
November 8
