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Henry Highland Garnet's "Address to the Slaves of the United States of America"
The work is valuable, because it was among the first, and was actually the boldest and most direct appeal in behalf of freedom, which was made in the early part of the Anti-Slavery Reformation. -
William Lloyd Garrison Published "The Liberator"
The Liberator reached thousands of individuals worldwide. His ceaseless, uncompromising position on the moral outrage that was slavery made him loved and hated by many Americans. -
Nat Turner Slave Revolt
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. Rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, at least 51 being white. This created even more tension among masters and their slaves. -
American Anti-Slavery Society begins
The society gave freed slaves a chance to be heard and made the movement as a whole harder for people to ignore. -
Sarah Grimke’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women published
In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman of 1838, Sarah Grimké responded to Catharine Beecher's defense of the subordinate role of women. This furthers the progress of the push more women's rights at the time. -
Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days. -
Harriett Tubman Escapes from Slavery
Tubman's escape inspired her to help other slaves gain freedom. She eventually started the Underground Railroad to help move slaves from the south to free states in the north. There was also a high price on Tubman's head after her escape, making her work even more dangerous. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This legalized slave hunters and allowed slave owners to hire people to hunt their escaped slaves. -
Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
Sojourner Truth Delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman” Speech
Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and former slave, gave one of history’s most memorable speeches on the intersection between women’s suffrage and black rights. Speaking to the Ohio Women’s Convention, Truth used her identity to point out the ways in which both movements were failing black women. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War". -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States that emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. -
Republican Party Founded
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting in Wisconsin is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. This continued the two-party system in the United States, but also caused more political division. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott decision legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Dred Scott who had resided in a free state and territory where slavery was prohibited was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. -
Panic of 1857
The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the interconnectedness of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis that began in late 1857 was the first worldwide economic crisis. -
Lecompton Constitution
Lecompton Constitution was an instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. This gave other Southern states the idea of possibly seceding. -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
The Democrats were facing some big issues that they couldn't ignore and couldn't solve. Slavery and states' rights were at the forefront of democratic discussions, and the party soon found itself splitting down regional lines. Democrats in the north and in the south had different opinions on how to deal with those issues, causing the party to split. This caused more political division and made the country more divided overall. -
Creation of the Radical Republicans
Radical Republican, during and after the American Civil War, a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of the slaves and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed blacks. This added more variation in important political arguments going on at the time. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
Lincoln was elected right as the south seceded from the United States and went into civil war. Lincoln also preserved the Union during the American Civil War and brought about the emancipation of the slaves. He was able to lead the country through the many hardships of the time. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
Confederate leaders ordered an attack. Just before sunrise a shell exploded above Fort Sumter. It was the first shot fired in the American Civil War. Major Robert Anderson led the small force of U.S. soldiers at Fort Sumter. -
Confederate States of America Founded
The formation of the Confederate States of America was the last straw of all the tensions in the United States. This action by the Southern states gave even more fuel to the fight and eventually pushed the two "countries" into a civil war. -
Battle of Antietam
Confederate and Union troops in the Civil War clash near Maryland's Antietam Creek in the bloodiest single day in American military history. The Battle of Antietam marked the culmination of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the Northern states. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. -
General U.S. Grant Assumed Command of Union Troops
President Abraham Lincoln promoted Ulysses S. Grant, a major general in the U.S. Army, to the rank of lieutenant general. The document placed Grant, who would go on to become the nation's 18th president, in charge of all Union troops pitted against Confederate forces during the Civil War. -
Sherman’s March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted in Georgia by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army and resulted in a victory for the Union. -
Abraham Lincoln Reelected
The 1864 election was the first time since 1812 that a presidential election took place during a war. For much of 1864, Lincoln himself believed he had little chance of being re-elected and because of this, McClellan was thought to be a heavy favorite to win the election. -
Ku Klux Klan formed
Ku Klux Klan, either of two distinct U.S. hate organizations that have employed terror in pursuit of their white supremacist agenda. One group was founded immediately after the Civil War and lasted until the 1870s; the other began in 1915 and has continued to the present. This set back the advancement of African Americans after the outlawing of slavery. -
Lee Surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
Robert E. Lee surrenders. At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender and began to close the American Civil War. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment, amendment to the Constitution of the United States that formally abolished slavery. Although the words slavery and slave are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment abrogated those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the “peculiar institution” -
Freedman’s Bureau Established
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of the United States Department of War to "direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children." -
Johnson Announced Plans for Presidential Reconstruction
In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. -
Arrival of Scalawags and Carpetbaggers in the South
The term “carpetbaggers” refers to Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. Many carpetbaggers were said to have moved South for their own financial and political gains. Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. -
Lincoln Assassination
Occurring near the end of the American Civil War, the assassination was part of a larger conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the United States government. -
Andrew Johnson Became President
Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. -
Civil Rights Act Passed over Johnson’s Veto
A Republican-dominated Congress enacted a landmark Civil Rights Act on this day in 1866, overriding a veto by President Andrew Johnson. The law's chief thrust was to offer protection to slaves freed in the aftermath of the Civil War. -
First Congressional Reconstruction Act passed
Reconstruction Acts, U.S. legislation enacted in 1867–68 that outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War. The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress. -
14th Amendment Ratified
The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. This created a greater population in each state for political and economic gain. -
Andrew Johnson Impeached
The trial, convened by the Senate on March 5, focused on issues surrounding Johnson's post-Civil War Reconstruction policy and, more specifically, his firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. -
U.S. Grant Elected President
The United States presidential election of 1868 was the 21st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1868. In the first election of the Reconstruction Era, Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour. -
15th Amendment Ratified
The 15th amendment gave African American men the right to vote, which continued the strides for the rights of African Americans after the Civil War. This also gave fuel to the push for the right to vote for other minorities, like African American women. -
Period of “Redemption” after the Civil War
"Redemption" truly began in Georgia with the state elections held in December 1870. By then the state Republican Party suffered from internal divisions and from charges of wastefulness and corruption, which, while greatly exaggerated by Democratic politicians and newspapers, nevertheless bore some truth. -
Slaughterhouse Cases (Supreme Court)
Slaughterhouse Cases, in American history, legal dispute that resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1873 limiting the protection of the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
U.S. v. Cruikshank
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, was an important United States Supreme Court decision in United States constitutional law, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.
