won the presidential election. By the time of his inauguration 7 states had seceded from the Union. The Civil War began when South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Lincoln gave command to Ulysses Grant during the Civil War. A couple of years later he allowed blacks to fight in the army. Lincoln signed the 13th amendment in 1864 that abolished slavery. On April 14, 1865 Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at Appomattox Court House by John Booth. Thaddeus Stevens Thaddeus Stevens was one of the most influential Republican leaders during the reconstruction era. In 1861 he became chairman of the House of Representatives. He played an important role in the printing of paper money during the Civil War. His greatest development was the Reconstruction policy. During the Civil War he fought for antislavery measures and stricter terms for Reconstruction. After the Confederate surrender, Stevens didn't agree with President Johnson's Reconstruction plan and wanted a more effective policy. In 1868 Stevens was a prosecutor in the president's impeachment trial. Jefferson Davis Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America. He struggled to lead the Confederacy to freedom during the United States Civil War. Davis wanted Mississippi to leave the Union and he wanted to be the commander of the southern army. Instead he was elected president of the Confederacy. For the four years he was in office he gave his complete dedication to the country. Even though he tried hard, he wasn't a very good president. He kept friends in office that weren't trained and he wasted some of his time on unimportant matters. His greatest weakness was that he couldn't work well with other people. Because of these things, he gradually became unpopular as the war continued. In 1865, when the Confederacy was losing, Davis fled from Richmond and hoped to continue the war from the deep so...
