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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 -
Nat Turner Slave Revolt
Rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, at least 51 being white.[4] The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. There was widespread fear in the aftermath, and white militias organized in retaliation against the slaves -
William Lloyd Garrison Published The Liberator
Garrison changed his position and became the leader of the emerging anti-slavery movement. His publication, The Liberator, reached thousands of individuals worldwide -
American Anti-Slavery Society Begins
an 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 Letter on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women published
he insisted that women had the same rights and duties as men and should be able to participate fully in education, religion, work and politics—including the abolition movement. 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. -
Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
launched the woman suffrage movement in the United States -
Harriett Tubman Escapes from Slavery
Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles -
Compromise of 1850
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
The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was 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
At the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth delivered what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in American history, “Ain’t I a Woman?” She continued to speak out for the rights of African Americans and women during and after the Civil War. -
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. Published in 1852, 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
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 -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was an organic act passed by the 33rd U.S. Congress that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and President Franklin Pierce. -
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. -
Creation of the Radical Republicans
The Radical Republicans were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party of the United States from around 1854 until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "Radicals" with a sense of a complete permanent eradication of slavery and secessionism, without compromise. -
Dred Scott Decision
the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, thereby negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
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
The Lecompton Constitution was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas. The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates. -
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
Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War. -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
Southern Democrats favored slavery in all territories, while their Northern counterparts thought each territory should decide for itself via popular referendum -
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. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. He was the first president from the Republican Party. -
Confederate States of America Founded
In February 1861, 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. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was 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
Military historians consider the Battle of Antietam a stalemate. Even so, the Union claimed victory. And keeping Confederates in their southern box enabled President Lincoln to finally release his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The 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
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 on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is one of the best-known speeches in American history. -
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
Ohioan William Tecumseh Sherman, a general in the Union army during the American Civil War, is best known for his March to the Sea. On September 1, 1864, Sherman and his army captured Atlanta, Georgia, an important transportation center in the Confederacy. -
Abraham Lincoln Reelected
On this day in 1864, Northern voters overwhelmingly endorse the leadership and policies of President Abraham Lincoln when they elect him to a second term. With his re-election, any hope for a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy vanished. -
Lincoln Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. -
Lee Surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War. Resulted in Decisive Union victory:, Surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to the Federal Army of the Potomac -
Andrew Johnson Became President
Andrew Johnson was the 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. -
Ku Klux Klan formed
In Pulaski, Tennessee, a group of Confederate veterans convenes to form a secret society that they christen the “Ku Klux Klan.” The KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government’s progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population. -
Freedman’s Bureau Established
The Freedmen's Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
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. -
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
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
On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was 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. -
Andrew Johnson Impeached
The impeachment of Andrew Johnson occurred in 1868, when the United States House of Representatives resolved to impeach U.S. President Andrew Johnson, adopting eleven articles of impeachment detailing his "high crimes and misdemeanors", in accordance with Article Two of the United States Constitution. -
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 granted African American men the right to vote. -
Period of “Redemption” after the Civil War
the Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party, who pursued a policy of Redemption, seeking to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". -
Slaughterhouse Cases (Supreme Court)
The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36, was the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment which had recently been enacted. -
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.
