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Nat Turner Slave Revolt
(also known as the Southampton Insurrection) 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. -
William Lloyd Garrison Published The Liberator
he was an American journalistic crusader who published a newspaper, The Liberator (1831–65), and helped lead the successful abolitionist campaign against slavery in the United States -
American Anti-Slavery Society Begins
abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was also a freed slave who often spoke at meetings. -
Sarah Grimke’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women published
Sarah made the case for women’s equality with passionate conviction. In 1838 her words were radical indeed, and won the agreement of only a small minority. -
Henry Highland Garnet’s “Address to the Slaves of the United States of America”
Instead of hoping to convince free people (primarily free white people, of course) of the evils of slavery, Garnet speaks directly to those enslaved, urging them to rebel against their masters. -
Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Held in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, the meeting launched the women’s suffrage movement, which more than seven decades later ensured women the right to vote. -
Harriet Tubman Escaped from Slavery
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad. -
Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, 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. -
Fugitive Slave Act
passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Sojourner Truth Delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman” Speech
Sojourner Truth would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin
in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. The book established Stowe’s reputation as a woman of letters -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
It 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´. -
Bleeding Kansas
or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which 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 on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. -
Dred Scott Decision
legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (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 (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional -
Lecompton Constitution
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. -
Panic of 1857
a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
Because the Democratic vote was spread so thin, Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Douglas, Breckenridge, and Bell in the 1860 presidential election. The Democrats' split had defeated their own party. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. -
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. -
Confederate States of America Founded
representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America. On February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy's first president. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War -
Battle of Antietam
Beginning early on the morning of this day in 1862, 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
fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, 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 on January 1, 1863, 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
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the end of the ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. -
General U.S. Grant Assumed Command of Union Troops
President Abraham Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoting then-Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army. -
Sherman’s March to the Sea
Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of Sherman's March to the Sea was to frighten Georgia's civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. -
Abraham Lincoln Reelected
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. ... Because of this, McClellan was thought to be a heavy favorite to win the election. -
Lincoln Assassination
at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865. Shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime -
Lee Surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. ... But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end. -
Andrew Johnson Became President
17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. -
Johnson Announced Plans for Presidential Reconstruction
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
Carpetbaggers - driven by hopes of economic gain, a desire to work on behalf of the newly emancipated slaves or a combination of both; South viewed as opportunists looking to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes
Scalawags - the majority of Republican support in the South came from white southerners who for various reasons saw more of an advantage in backing the policies of Reconstruction than in opposing them -
Ku Klux Klan formed
Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, during the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. -
Period of “Redemption” after the Civil War
A period of U.S. history, from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation tried to resolve the status of the ex-Confederate states, the ex-Confederate leaders, and freedmen (ex-slaves) after the American Civil War. -
Freedman’s Bureau Established
the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, established by Congress to provide practical aid to 4,000,000 newly freed African Americans in their transition from slavery to freedom -
Civil Rights Act Passed over Johnson’s Veto
Congress overrides veto to enact civil rights bill, April 9, 1866. 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
outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65). The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress. -
14th Amendment Ratified
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. -
Andrew Johnson Impeached
the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 (with 17 members not voting) in favor of a resolution to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. ... One week later, the House adopted eleven articles of impeachment against the President. -
U.S. Grant Elected President
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
granted African American men the right to vote. -
Slaughterhouse Cases (Supreme Court)
the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment which had recently been enacted. ... In effect, the amendment was interpreted to convey limited protection pertinent to a small minority of rights. -
U.S. v. Cruikshank
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
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.
