epulsed at the first Battle of Bull Run.
13/5/1861. Britain declared its neutrality in the American Civil War.
17/4/1861, Virginia voted to secede from the United States, after the Battle of Fort Sumter and Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers.
14/4/1861, The Battle of Fort Sumter ended. Confederates captured the fort.
12/4/1861. The American Civil War began between the 23 northern states and the 11 southern states. The Confederates fired shots on Fort Sumter. See 26/5/1865, end of Civil War. On 20/12/1860 South Carolina had seceded from the Union and between 9/1/1861 and 1/2/1861 six other states also seceded, mainly over the slavery issue. They set up the Confederate states.
Governor Pickens sent commissioners to Washington to claim possession of all US property in his state, including the forts on Charleston harbour. The northern, Union, forces meanwhile covertly abandoned Fort Moultrie, untenable against a land attack, and reinforced their position at Fort Sumter, on 26/12/1860. President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated at Washington on 4/3/1861. Lincoln faced the dilemma that seven slave states had seceded but eight remained in the Union. Any attempt at coercion would push these eight, apart possibly from Delaware, into the Confederacy. Many in the North favoured ‘letting the wayward sisters depart in peace’, and did not want war. The South was less averse to war because it believed the other slave states would rally to its aid. The South, outnumbered 2 to 1 in manpower and 30 to 1 in availability of arms, needed overseas aid to win.
Lincoln’s inaugural speech was really addressed to the slave states still in the Union, but sounded like a declaration of war to the Confederacy in the South. Lincoln determined to relieve Sumter, which might be starved into surrender by the Confederates. The Confederacy wanted war to galvanise its citizens, a considerable minority of whom had opposed secession. The bombardment of Sumter continued from 4.30am. on the 12 April until the afternoon of the 13 April, when it surrendered. The fall of Sumter ‘set the heather afire’ in the North, and the Civil War was underway.
4/3/1861, President Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address as US President, promised to uphold the Union but also to preserve slavery in areas where it existed.
8/2/1861, The Confederate States united to fight the American Civil War, and chose Jefferson Davis as provisional President.
4/2/1861, Delegates from the seven Southern Confederate US States met in Montgomery to draft a separate Constitution. They were alarmed at President Lincoln’s overwhelming victocy in the rapidly-industrialising North, and his opposition to slavery.
29/1/1861, Kansas became the 34th State of the Union.
1860, The US songwriter Dan Emmett “I wish I was in the land of the dixes”; referring to the banknotes issued by the Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana, which used both English and French on its notes, so the 10$ notes were stamped ‘dix’, and became known as dixes. Emmett’s line became corrupted to “I wish I was in the land of Dixie”.
20/12/1860. South Carolina seceded from the USA.
13/9/1860, John Pershing, commander of US forces in France in World War One, was born in Linn County, Missouri.
6/3/1860. The Republican politician Abraham Lincoln made a campaign speech defending the right to strike.
28/1/1860, Joseph Addison Alexander, US scholar (born 24/4/1809 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) died in Princeton.
10/1/1860. The first major factory accident in the USA. A textiles factory collapsed in St Lawrence, Massachusetts, killing 77 people.
1859, Boston’s Public Garden was established, 108 acres.
23/11/1859, Billy the Kid, or William Bonney, was shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett.
14/2/1859. Oregon became the 33rd State of the USA.
1858, Central Park in New York opened to the public, although it was not completed until 1863.
9/11/1858, The New York Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert.
13/7/1858, US anthropologist Robert Culin was born in Philadelphia (died 8/4/1929).
16/6/1858. In a speech at Springfield, Illinois, US Senate candidate Abraham