1861, February 4: Confederate States of America is formed

February 18: Jefferson Davis of Mississippi is sworn in as president and Alexander Stevens of Georgia as vice president of the Confederate States of America

March 4: Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as sixteenth president of the United States

March 11: Confederate Congress adopts a Constitution

April 12: Confederate forces assault Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina

May 6: President Lincoln declares a state of insurrection in the Southern states

May 21: Richmond, Virginia, becomes the official capital of the Confederate States

1862, September 22: Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in territories under Confederate control

1863, January 1: Emancipation Proclamation takes effect

1865, February 1: Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery

March 4: Lincoln is inaugurated as president for a second term

April 9: Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the primary Confederate field army, surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War

December 18: Thirteenth Amendment is ratified

1866, June 16: Congress passes the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to the former slaves and threatening states with a loss of representation if they denied freedmen the vote; race riots engulf Memphis and New Orleans

1868, July 23: Fourteenth Amendment is ratified

1870, March 30: Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing freedmen the right to vote

1877, March 5: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is sworn in as nineteenth president of the United States after the disputed election of 1876; Reconstruction ends