| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| February 2 | President Lincoln travels to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to meet with Confederate peace delegates. |
| February 22 | The last open Confederate port, located at Wilmington, North Carolina, is captured by the Union. |
| March 3 | The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau) to aid former slaves and white refugees is established by Congress. |
| March 4 | President Lincoln is inaugurated for a second term. |
| March 27-28 | President Lincoln meets with his generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, as well as with Admiral David D. Porter, at City Point, Virginia. President Lincoln wants a quick end to the war with as little loss of life as possible. He also advocates generous terms of surrender in order to avoid more bloodshed. |
| April 2 | General Robert E. Lee withdraws from Petersburg, and advises President Davis to move the Confederate government from Richmond. |
| April 3 | Men from the Union Army enter Petersburg and Richmond. |
| April 5 | President Lincoln arrives in Richmond and tours the city. Cheered by the city's former slaves, he also sits in President Davis's chair. |
| April 9 | At Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, General Ulysses S. Grant accepts the formal surrender of General Robert E. Lee. |
| April 11 | President Lincoln urges conciliation in his final public address. |
| April 14 | President Lincoln is assassinated in Ford's Theater by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a southern sympathizer. He dies the following morning, the first president to die by assassination. |
| April 15 | Andrew Johnson is sworn in as president. |
| April 18 | Confederate General J. E. Johnston surrenders to General William T. Sherman, which marked the formal end of Confederate resistance. |
| April 26 | John Wilkes Booth is shot and killed in Bowling Green, Virginia. |
| May 10 | President Johnson declares that armed resistance to the federal government is officially at an end. |
| September 5 | All southern ports are reopened to foreign shipping. |
| December 1 | The writ of habeas corpus, which had been suspended by President Lincoln, is restored. |
| December 18 | The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, is ratified by the states and proclaimed in effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward. |
| December 24 | Meeting in the law office of Thomas M. Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee, six former Confederate officers form a secret society that will become the Ku Klux Klan. |