Local
1860 - According to the 1860 Hays County, Texas, Slave Schedule, John Wheeler Bunton, a white slave owner, claims ownership of a fourteen-year old mulatto boy who may be Ransom Williams.
1867 - Ransom Williams' name appears in the Hays County, Texas, voter registration rolls as a "colored" man. Since he never learned to read or write, Ransom Williams signs his name with an 'X'.
Image of Hays County voter registration
Late 1860s - Ransom Williams lives in or near the freedmen community called Antioch Colony in Hays County, Texas. Antioch Colony is completely surrounded by white landowners' farms and ranches, but the community thrives from the late 1860s to the 1940s.
Map of the antioch colony and surreounding communities
State
1860 - Slaves make up approximately 1/3 of the total population in Texas.
Map of black slave as a percentage of total 1860 population by county
1861 - Governor Sam Houston refuses to pledge an oath to the Confederacy and is forced out of office.

1862 - Great Hanging at Gainesville: Forty Texans suspected of supporting the Union are hanged.
Illustration of 1860s hanging
1865 -The Freedmen's Bureau begins operation in Texas.

May, 1865 - Union soldiers of the 62nd Colored Infantry (a volunteer regiment) fight Confederate soldiers near Brownsville at the Battle of Palmito Ranch after the official end of the Civil War, because word has not yet reached Texas that the war is over.

June 19, 1865: General Order No. 3 ends slavery in Texas two months after slaves are freed in the Union. This date is celebrated each year as "Juneteenth."

1866 - Texas passes its Black Code laws, which deny African Americans many freedoms.

1868 - Texas branch of the Ku Klux Klan is organized.
National
November, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln is elected president.

1861 - American Civil War begins at Ft. Sumter, South Carolina. In the four years the war lasts, an estimated 620,000 men die in the line of duty.

1863 - President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declares all slaves in the Confederate states to be free.
Image of the Emancipation Proclamation
1865 - President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated five days after the Civil War ends.

1865 - Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery.
Illustration of a freed man
1865 - Congress establishes the Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves. Its main goals are to protect African American freedmen and their property and to establish schools for African American children.