DOUGLAS GINSBURG, Federal Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit:
When you think of the many important events during the Civil War, it helps to start at the beginning: Fort Sumter.

South Carolina troops fired on the federal garrison in Charleston Harbor. Two days later, the fort surrendered. Ironically, no one died in the battle that launched our bloodiest war.
The bloodiest single day in American history happened in the Maryland countryside. Some 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing before a Union Army turned back the Confederates at Antietam Creek.
President Lincoln used the occasion of this success to issue the Emancipation Proclamation – the first step toward ending slavery, and a turning point in the war.
The summer of 1863 brought another turning point. Union troops repulsed a Confederate invasion at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

At the same time in Mississippi, the besieged Confederate fortress at Vicksburg fell to General Ulysses S. Grant – splitting the Confederacy in two.
The following year, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman waged total war from Atlanta to Savannah – his famous March to the Sea. Sherman left a path of ruin nearly 300 miles long – destroying the plantations, and factories, and railroads that supplied the Confederate armies.
The next spring, outnumbered and surrounded, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the main Confederate Army at the Virginia hamlet of Appomattox.
Five days later, on the very eve of victory, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The country then faced the daunting task of Reconstruction – binding up the nation’s wounds, and rebuilding.