American Civil War Timeline:

 1860:

• November 6: Abraham Lincoln is elected President, sparking Southern secession anxieties.

1861:

• February 4: Montgomery Convention establishes the Confederate States of America.
• March 4: Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as President.
• April 12-14: The Confederacy bombards and captures Fort Sumter in South Carolina, officially beginning the Civil War.
• May: Richmond, Virginia, becomes the Confederate capital.
• June 3: First land battle in the East at Philippi, Virginia.
• June 8: Tennessee secedes from the Union.
• June 10: First major land battle of the war at Big Bethel, Virginia.
• June 20: West Virginia splits from Virginia and joins the Union.

1862:

• March 9: Ironclad warships clash in the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack.
• April 6-7: Battle of Shiloh, a bloody stalemate with heavy casualties on both sides.
• April-May: Union forces under General McClellan launch the Peninsular Campaign towards Richmond, ultimately failing.
• September 17: Antietam, Maryland becomes the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.
• December 13: Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in Confederate states to be free.

1863:

• July 1-3: The pivotal Battle of Gettysburg ends in a Union victory, marking a turning point in the war.
• July 4: Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrenders to the Union, giving them control of the Mississippi River.
• November 19: The Gettysburg Address is delivered by President Lincoln.

1864:

• May-September: General Ulysses S. Grant leads the brutal Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
• September 2: General William Sherman captures Atlanta, Georgia, and begins his "March to the Sea."
• November 8: Lincoln is re-elected President.
• December 15: Savannah, Georgia, falls to Union forces.

1865:

• April 3: Richmond, Virginia, is captured by the Union.
• April 9: Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the war.
• April 14: President Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
• May 9: Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is captured.

This is just a brief timeline. The Civil War was a complex event with many other important battles, events, and figures.