Battle of Fort Sumter in the context of "Sullivan's Island, South Carolina"

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States and playing a major role in the abolition of slavery.

Lincoln was born into poverty in Kentucky and raised on the frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. representative. Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, prompting a majority of slave states to begin to secede and form the Confederate States. A month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War.

In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.

Of the 34 U.S. states in 1861, nineteen were free states and fifteen were slave including the four border states; each of the latter held a comparatively low percentage of slaves. Delaware never declared for secession. Maryland was largely prevented from seceding by local unionists and federal troops. Two others, Kentucky and Missouri, saw rival governments, though their territory mostly stayed in Union control after 1862. Four others did not declare for secession until after the Battle of Fort Sumter and were briefly considered border states: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. They are called the Upper South, in contrast to the Deep South. A new border state was created during the war, West Virginia, which was formed from 50 counties of Virginia and became a new slave state in the Union in 1863 (with, initially, gradual abolition law).

This timeline of events leading to the American Civil War is a chronologically ordered list of events and issues that historians recognize as origins and causes of the American Civil War. These events are roughly divided into two periods: the first encompasses the gradual build-up over many decades of the numerous social, economic, and political issues that ultimately contributed to the war's outbreak, and the second encompasses the five-month span following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860 and culminating in the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861.

Scholars have identified many different causes for the war, but the most polarizing issue was whether the institution of slavery should be retained and even expanded to other territories or whether it should be contained, which would lead to its ultimate extinction. Since the early colonial period, slavery had played a major role in the socioeconomic system of British America and was widespread in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. During and after the American Revolution, events and statements by politicians and others brought forth differences, tensions and divisions between citizens of the slave states of the Southern United States and citizens of the free states of the Northern United States (including several newly admitted Western states) over the topics of slavery. In the many decades between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such divisions became increasingly irreconcilable and contentious.

Fort Sumter is a historical sea fort located near Charleston, South Carolina. Constructed on an artificial island at the entrance of Charleston Harbor in 1829, the fort was built in response to the War of 1812, which had exposed the inadequacy of existing American coastal fortifications to defend against naval attacks. Fort Sumter was still incomplete in 1861 when it was attacked by Confederate Forces during the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, sparking the American Civil War; the fort was severely damaged during the battle and left in ruins. Although there were some efforts at reconstruction after the war, Fort Sumter as conceived was never completed. Since the middle of the 20th century, the fort has been open to the public as part of the Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, operated by the National Park Service.

The American state of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederacy when it joined during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion. For all practical purposes, Virginia joined the Confederacy on April 17, though secession was not officially ratified until May 23. A Unionist government was established in Wheeling and the new state of West Virginia was created by an act of Congress from 50 counties of western Virginia, making it the only state to lose territory as a consequence of the war. Unionism was indeed strong also in other parts of the State, and during the war the Restored Government of Virginia was created as rival to the Confederate Government of Virginia, making it one of the states to have 2 governments during the Civil War.

In May, it was decided to move the Confederate capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, in large part because, regardless of the Virginian capital's political status, its defense was deemed vital to the Confederacy's survival. On May 24, 1861, the U.S. Army moved into northern Virginia and captured Alexandria without a fight. Most of the battles in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War took place in Virginia because the Confederacy had to defend its national capital at Richmond, and public opinion in the North demanded that the Union move "On to Richmond!" The successes of Robert E. Lee in defending Richmond are a central theme of the military history of the war. The White House of the Confederacy, located a few blocks north of the State Capitol, became home to the family of Confederate leader, former Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis.

The American Civil War significantly affected Tennessee, with every county witnessing combat. During the War, Tennessee was a Confederate state, and the last state to officially secede from the Union to join the Confederacy. Tennessee had been threatening to secede since before the Confederacy was even formed, but would not officially do so until after the fall of Fort Sumter when public opinion throughout the state drastically shifted. Tennessee seceded in protest to President Lincoln's April 15 Proclamation calling forth 75,000 members of state militias to suppress the rebellion. Tennessee provided the second largest number of troops for the Confederacy, and would also provide more southern unionist soldiers for the Union Army than any other state within the Confederacy.

In February 1862, some of the war's first serious fighting took place along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, recognized as major military highways, and mountain passes such as Cumberland Gap were keenly competed-for by both sides. The Battle of Shiloh and the fighting along the Mississippi brought glory to the then little-known Ulysses S. Grant, while his area commander Henry Halleck was rewarded with a promotion to General-in-Chief. The Tullahoma campaign, led by William Rosecrans, drove the Confederates from Middle Tennessee so quickly that they did not take many casualties, and were strong enough to defeat Rosecrans soon afterward. At Nashville in December 1864, George Thomas routed the Army of Tennessee under John Bell Hood, the last major battle fought in the state.

The national flag of the United States, often referred to as the American flag or the U.S. flag, consists of thirteen horizontal stripes, alternating red and white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows, where rows of six stars alternate with rows of five stars. The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 U.S. states, and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen English colonies that won independence from Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War.

The flag was created as an item of military equipment to identify U.S. ships and forts. It evolved gradually during early American history, and was not designed by any one person. The flag exploded in popularity in 1861 as a symbol of opposition to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. It came to symbolize the Union in the American Civil War; Union victory solidified its status as a national flag. Because of the country's emergence as a superpower in the 20th century, the flag is now among the most widely recognized symbols in the world.