ivil War, Federal troops withdrew from the area between the James and York Rivers, after suffering heavy losses.
25/5/1862, Battle of Winchester; Confederate victory.
8/5/1862, Battle of McDowell; Confederate victory.
1/5/1862, Union forces occupied New Orleans.
15/4/1862. Nashville, Tennessee, became the first Confederate capital to fall to Union forces.
7/4/1862, In the American Civil War, the Federal Army under Grant defeated the Confederates under General Joseph Johnson, on the second day of the Battle of Shiloh, near the Tennessee River.
6/4/1862, The Battle of Shiloh began.
23/3/1862, Unionists defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Kernstown.
9/3/1862, The first battle between iron-clad ships took place in the American Civil War. Merrymack was forced to retreat by the Union ship Monitor. This blocked Confederate access to New York, and gave the Unionists command of the sea. The Monitor was the first ship to be fitted with a revolving gun turret allowing her to fire at any target regardless of direction and after 1862 all combat ships were fitted with this turret.
4/3/1862, Confederate forces under Henry Sibley took Santa Fe.
25/2/1862, ‘Greenbacks’, American banknotes, were first issued during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln.
8/11/1861, The Unionist warship San Jacinto removed Confederate Commissioners from the British mailship Trent.
7/11/1861. Union forces won a major victory over the Confederates at Port Royal, South Carolina.
24/10/1861, The Pony Express Mail Service in America, running from St Joseph in Missouri to Sacramento in California, ended after operating for just over 18 months. The Transcontinental telegraph line across the USA was completed.
2/10/1861, At the Battle of Bulls Bluff, on the Potomac River, the Unionists were defeated.
20/9/1861 The Battle of Lexington.
19/8/1861 The passport system was introduced in the USA.
16/8/1861. President Lincoln barred all commerce with the Confederacy.
21/7/1861. The first thrust by Unionist forces towards the Confederate capital at Richmond was repulsed 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 surrend