BEGINNING: At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. Less than 34 hours later, Union forces surrendered. The Civil War had begun.

The timeline for the Civil War, though, often starts with the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The website for the National Park Service at Gettysburg gives some history.

On Dec. 20,1860, South Carolina secedes from the United States. In January, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas do the same. In February, the Confederate States of America are formed, and Jefferson Davis is appointed as provisional president.

On April 15,1861, ‘President Lincoln issues a public declaration that an insurrection exists and calls for 75,000 militia to stop the rebellion. As a result of this call for volunteers, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee secede from the Union in the following weeks. Lincoln will respond on May 3 with an additional call for 43,000+ volunteers to serve for three years, expanding the size of the Regular Army.’

The war continues until 1865. General Robert

E. Lee’s surrender at

Appomattox comes on

April 9.

On April 14,1865, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated at Ford’s Theater by actor John Wilkes Booth.

According to battlefields.org, ‘Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War. This number comes from an 1889 study of the war performed by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. Both men fought for the Union. A recent study puts the number of dead as high as 850,000. Roughly 1.264.000 American soldiers have died in the nation’s wars — 620,000 in the Civil War and 644.000 in all other conflicts.’