The Trent Affair began when US forces boarded a British ship, the HMS Trent, and arrested Confederate envoys James Mason and John Slidell. The action antagonized the British government. Britain threatened to sever diplomatic ties with the United States, and Lincoln and his Cabinet agreed to release the Confederates taken from the Trent in order to maintain diplomatic ties with Britain.
The Senate passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, which stated that the war’s purpose was to defend the Constitution, not to interfere with slavery.
Hearing of Grant’s victory at Vicksburg five days earlier, Confederate forces surrendered Port Hudson, Louisiana, after a forty-eight day siege—the longest ever in the United States. The surrender restored control of the Mississippi to the Union, ending the war in the West. Port Hudson was also the first major battle in which black Union troops participated.
Lincoln announced the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all slaves in rebellious parts of the South on January 1, 1863, would be freed. The President hoped that emancipation would undermine the Confederacy from within. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported that the President told him that freeing the slaves was “a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union. . . . The slaves [are] undeniably an element of strength to those who [have] their service, and we must decide...
In his 701-word Second Inaugural Address, President Lincoln reflected on the causes and purpose of the war. Lincoln asserted that the “scourge of war” could be understood as divine punishment for the long national sin of slavery, in which both North and South had been complicit. “Both parties deprecated war,” Lincoln said, “but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” He urged Americans to “bind up the nations wounds” but not before...
President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washingon, DC, during a performance of Our American Cousin.
After a string of disappointing generals, President Lincoln named Ulysses S. Grant general in chief of the US Army.
Lincoln met with a Confederate delegation at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference. He hoped to negotiate an end to the war, but failed to reach an agreement.
Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m.; Andrew Johnson became president.