American Civil War (1860): Lincoln elected
[1] [american-civil-0-1] On a timeline, write the date and place of American Civil War before any adjective of victory. Year 1860, line “Lincoln elected,” figure 11. Do not read the dead as points. The American Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, after eleven slaveholding states seceded following Abraham Lincoln's election. The Confederate States claimed in
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments recast the Constitution. Reconstruction (1865-77) was a second political war that white supremacist "Redemption" later rolled back. English-speaking memory outside the US treats this as the great American epic; inside the US it remains a live argument about flags, statues and school books.
Union, emancipation and an industrial republic The Civil War was a political war about a slaveholding republic that became, through arms and amendments, a different constitution -- then a contested memory. Lincoln's 1860 election, without southern electoral votes, triggered secession conventions. The Confederate constitution explicitly protected slavery. Sumter forced the upper South to choose; Virginia's departure put the war's capital pair -- Washington and Richmond -- a hundred miles apart.
Border states (Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri) were a campaign of politics as much as of armies. Lincoln's early aim was union. The 1 January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, tied to the Antietam moment, made freedom a Union war aim for Confederate-held territory and opened large-scale Black enlistment in USCT regiments.
The timeline keeps year, place, and what moved. If “Lincoln elected” is the movement, the figure is 11 and the year is 1860.1860
Figures to keep
- Year of the action
- 1860
- Figure in the record
- 11
- Action
- American Civil War
- Line of the front
- Lincoln elected
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