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| 1863 |
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| Women garment workers filed hundreds of petitions urging the president and Congress to end the system of subcontracting, which allowed firms with government contracts to hire women in their homes at exceedingly low pay. | 1 |
| In the South women participated in bread riots to protest food shortages that emerged during the war. Northern women not only participated in bread riots but in antidraft riots as well. By 1865, Northern women had also formed the Women's Loyal League and petitioned Congress to enact a Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. | 2 |
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| 1864, March 9 |
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| Grant was made lieutenant general and commander in chief of all the armies; Sherman was given command in the West. Grant's plan was to defeat Lee's army. He crossed the Rapidan (May 3) and began the advance from near Chancellorsville through the Wilderness. | 3 |
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| May 5–6 |
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| BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. After a series of reverses, Union forces drove the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley (Battle of Cedar Creek, Oct. 19). Sheridan laid the whole region waste and then rejoined Grant at Petersburg. | 4 |
| The Cheyennes resisted the increasing encroachment of white settlers on their land with the aid of the Arapahoe, Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa. Troops under Col. John Chivington staged a massacre of Indians at Sand Creek, Colo. (Nov. 1864). A commission authorized by Congress persuaded the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa to relocate in Indian Territory and secured the removal of other groups from the Great Plains to more remote regions. | 5 |
| SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN. Sherman started from Chattanooga (May 5) with about 100,000 men to march through Georgia to Atlanta. He was opposed by one of the ablest Confederate commanders, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, with 65,000 men. Johnston did what he could to impede Sherman's advance, but wisely refused a general battle. Sherman, however, crossed the Chattahoochee River (July 17), as a result of which Johnston was removed from his command. His successor, Gen. John B. Hood, offered battle, but was defeated (Battle of Atlanta, July 22). | 6 |
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| Sept. 2 |
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| Evacuation of Atlanta by the Confederates. Sherman destroyed the factories and stores and urged upon Grant his plan of a march to the sea. Part of the army, under Thomas, was sent north to watch Hood, who was defeated before Nashville (Dec. 15–16). Sherman himself, with 60,000 men, started for the southeast (Nov. 16), ravaging the country as he proceeded. He reached the sea (Dec. 12), and the Confederates abandoned Savannah (Dec. 20). Sherman then turned north into South Carolina. Columbia was taken (Feb. 17, 1865), and the advance continued into North Carolina. | 7 |
| Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest led his men in a massacre of black soldiers, at Fort Pillow, Tenn. The men had surrendered the fort before they were slaughtered. | 8 |
| On the home front, Northern society gradually underwent changes that would greatly transform social life in the postwar years. The Great American Tea Company was organized in New York; its name was changed to the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A & P) in 1869; later it became America's first chain store, with over 500 stores by 1912. | 9 |
| At about the same time, Marshall Field's of Chicago pioneered the development of the specialty department store, which utilized fixed price systems. | 10 |
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| Nov. 8 |
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| Reelection of Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party had changed its name to the Union Party and selected for vice president the loyal Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson (1808–75). | 11 |
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