Civil War and Reconstruction
The war
Lincoln's election prompted secession; Fort Sumter (April 1861) began the fighting, and four border states stayed in the Union. The Anaconda Plan targeted blockade and the Mississippi. Antietam (1862) allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, which freed enslaved people only in rebelling states and opened the army to Black soldiers. Gettysburg and Vicksburg (July 1863) turned the tide; Grant and Sherman waged total war on resources and morale; Appomattox (April 1865) ended the fighting.
Reconstruction
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery; the Fourteenth (1868) guaranteed citizenship, equal protection, and due process against the states; the Fifteenth (1870) barred denying the vote because of race. Presidential Reconstruction was lenient, while Radical Republicans imposed the Military Reconstruction Acts, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over Johnson's vetoes. Johnson's impeachment turned on the Tenure of Office Act, and he was acquitted by one vote.
Retreat
White terror, Redeemer governments, and narrow Supreme Court rulings eroded federal protection. The Compromise of 1877 withdrew troops from the South; sharecropping and crop liens replaced slavery economically, and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) blessed segregation.
Traps. The Emancipation Proclamation did not touch slavery in the border states, and the Fourteenth protects citizens broadly while the Fifteenth addresses voting only.
Rule of thumb. 1865-1868-1870: free, citizen, vote.
Worked example. A Fourteenth Amendment excerpt usually asks you to conclude that states must respect due process and equal protection, not that Congress abolished slavery.