Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, officially beginning the American Civil War. Union forces surrendered on April 14 after 34 hours of being bombarded by Confederate cannons.

The Union tried to take Richmond, the capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy itself, which would have been a great victory. However, the Confederacy, under General Robert E. Lee, drove the Union Army back and won the battle.

Antietam, the first large-scale battle that took place on Union land, was a shocking win for the Union against General Lee’s army. Confederate forces that had invaded Maryland were pushed back. Many believe that this battle truly turned the tide toward a Union victory in the Civil War. Although the battle itself was a draw, for the Union it bolstered morale and its standing globally. After the battle, President Lincoln released his Emancipation Proclamation. On January 1, 1863, he declared, enslaved people in Confederate states ”shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Union territory, 75,000 Confederate soldiers met 90,000 Union soldiers on the battlefield. Union forces held firm, and Lee and the Confederacy were forced to admit a terrible defeat. Four months later, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, proclaiming that “these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

The winning of Vicksburg, Mississippi, by Ulysses S. Grant and the US Army signaled the fall of the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Control of the river meant controlling routes for and access to trade, troop movements, and supplies. The Union wins here in the west and Gettysburg in the east signaled the end of the Confederacy’s hopes for victory in the Civil War.

By April 1865, Grant’s troops had cut off Lee’s supply lines, forcing the Confederates to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. Lee and his men retreated, but Grant’s forces overtook them about a hundred miles west of Richmond. Recognizing that there was nowhere left to run and no more point in resisting, Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. This surrender meant the end of the four-year war. Only five days later, on April 14, President Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.