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Missouri Compromise 1820-1821
A series of arguments were made. Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. The rest of the
Louisiana Territory was split into two parts. A line was made. South of the line, slavery was legal. North of the line, except in Missouri, slavery was banned. Monroe was president at the time. -
Santa Fe Trail
It stretched 780 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe in the Mexican province of New Mexico as one of the busiest routes. -
San Felipe de Austin
Stephen F. Austin’s father, Moses Austin, had received a land grant from Spain to establish a colony between the Brazos and Colorado rivers but died before he was able to carry out his plans. Stephen obtained permission, first from Spain and then from Mexico after it had won its independence, to carry out his father’s project. In 1821 he established a colony where “no drunkard, no gambler, no profane swearer, and no idler” would be allowed. This colony was San Felipe de Austin. -
Mexico Abolishes Slavery
Protestant Anglo settlers were Southerners, who had brought slaves with them to Texas. Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, insisted in vain that the Texans free their slaves. -
Abolition
The movement to abolish slavery, became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. -
The Liberator
Radical white abolitionist, a young editor named William Lloyd Garrison. Active in religious reform movements in Massachusetts, Garrison became the editor of an antislavery paper in 1828. Three years later he established his own paper, The Liberator, to deliver an uncompromising demand of immediate emancipation. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Led by Virginia slave Nat Turner in August 1831, he and more than 50 followers attacked four plantations and killed about 60 whites. Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. -
Stephen F. Austin goes to jail
Mexican politics had become increasingly unstable. Austin had traveled to Mexico City late in 1833 to present petitions to Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna for greater self-government for Texas. While Austin was on his way home, Santa Anna had Austin imprisoned for inciting revolution. -
Texas Revolution
The 1836 rebellion in which Texas gained its
independence from Mexico. -
Oregon Trail
Stretched from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. It was blazed in 1836 by two Methodist missionaries named Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. By driving their wagon as far as Fort Boise, they proved that wagons could travel on the Oregon Trail. -
Texas Enters the United States
Southerners wanted Texas in order to extend slavery, which already had been established there. Northerners feared that the annexation of more slave territory would tip the uneasy balance in the Senate in favor of slave states and prompt war with Mexico. -
Manifest Destiny
It expressed the belief that the United States was ordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican and Native American territory. -
Mexican-American War
A war between the U.S. and Mexico spanned the period from spring 1846 to fall 1847. The war was initiated by Mexico and resulted in Mexico's defeat and the loss of approximately half of its national territory in the north. Mexico wanted to stop the expansion of the US. -
The North Star
Frederick Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper. He named it The North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom. He hoped that abolition could be achieved without violence. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Mexico agreed to the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico and ceded the New Mexico and California territories to the United States. -
Underground Railroad
Free African Americans and white abolitionists developed a secret network of people who would, at great risk to themselves, hide fugitive slaves. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors, born a slave in Maryland in 1820 or 1821. In 1849, after Tubman’s owner died, she heard rumors that she was about to be sold. Fearing this possibility, Tubman decided to make a break for freedom and succeeded in reaching Philadelphia. Shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman resolved to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad. In all, she made 19 trips back to the South and is said to have helped 300 slaves, including her parents. -
Compromise of 1850
The issue of New Mexico and Texas being slave or free states was disputed. Henry Clay worked to shape a compromise that both the North and the South could accept. After obtaining support of the Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster, Clay presented to the Senate a series of resolutions. The compromise provided that California be admitted to the Union as a free state. To please the South, the compromise proposed a new and more effective fugitive slave law. The proposal was rejected. -
Fugitive Slave Act
Alleged fugitive slaves were not entitled to a trial by jury. In addition, anyone convicted of helping a fugitive was liable for a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment for up to six months. Infuriated by the Fugitive Slave Act, some Northerners resisted it by organizing “vigilance committees” to send endangered African Americans to safety in Canada. Others resorted to violence to rescue fugitive slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which stressed that slavery was not just a political contest, but also a great moral struggle. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas and Nebraska territory lay north of the Missouri Compromise line and therefore was legally closed to slavery. Douglas introduced a bill in Congress on January 23, 1854, that would divide the area into two territories: Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. If passed, the bill would repeal the Missouri Compromise and establish popular sovereignty for both territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in 1854. -
Dread Scott v. Sandford
A slave whose owner took him from the slave state of Missouri to free territory in Illinois and Wisconsin and back to Missouri. Scott appealed to the Supreme Court for his freedom on the grounds that living in a free state, Illinois and a free territory,Wisconsin had made him a free man.The case was in court for years. Finally, on March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott. -
Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Debates
The 1858 race for the U.S. Senate. Douglas believed deeply inpopular sovereignty. Lincoln, on the other hand, believed that slavery was immoral. However, he did not expect individuals to give up slavery unless Congress abolished slavery with an amendment. Douglas won the Senate seat. -
John Brown's Raid / Harpers Ferry
Abolitionist John Brown was studying the slave uprisings that had occurred in ancient Rome and, more recently, on the French island of Haiti. He believed that the time was ripe for similar uprisings in the United States. Brown secretly obtained financial backing from several prominent Northern abolitionists. On the night of October 16, 1859, he led a band of 21 men, black and white, into Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His aim was to seize the federal arsenal there and start a general slave uprising. -
Abraham Lincoln becomes President
Northern Democrats rallied behind Douglas and his doctrine of popular sovereignty. Southern Democrats, who supported the Dred Scott decision, lined up behind Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Former Know-Nothings and Whigs from the South organized the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee as their candidate. Lincoln emerged as the winner with less than half the popular vote and with no electoral votes from the South. -
Formation of the Confederacy
Mississippi soon followed South Carolina’s lead, as did Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In February 1861, delegates from the secessionist states met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they formed the Confederate States of America. The Confederates unanimously elected former senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president. -
Attack on Fort Sumter
April 12, Confederate batteries began thundering away to the cheers of Charleston’s citizens. Fort Sumter had fallen. -
Battle of Bull Run
In the morning the Union army gained the upper hand, but the Confederates held firm. In the afternoon Confederate reinforcements helped win the first Southern victory. Fortunately for the Union, the Confederates were too exhausted to follow up their victory with an attack on Washington. -
Battle at Antietam
The clash proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with casualties totaling more than 26,000. The next day, instead of pursuing the battered Confederate army into Virginia and possibly ending the war, McClellan did nothing. As a result, Lincoln removed him from command. -
Gettysburg Address
In November 1863, a ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery in Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln spoke for more than two minutes. -
Emancipation Proclamation
LIncoln authorized the army to emancipate slaves. The proclamation gave the war a moral purpose by turning the struggle into a fight to free the slaves. -
Battle at Vicksburg
In the winter of 1862–1863, Grant tried several schemes to reach Vicksburg and take it from the Confederates. Nothing seemed to work, until the spring of 1863. Grant began by weakening the Confederate defenses that protected Vicksburg. He sent Benjamin Grierson to lead his cavalry brigade through the heart of Mississippi. Grierson succeeded in destroying rail lines and distracting Confederate forces from Union infantry working its way toward Vicksburg. Union won in 18 days. -
Battle at Gettysburg
Confederate soldiers led by A. P. Hill encountered several brigades of Union cavalry under the command of John Buford, an experienced officer from Illinois. Buford ordered his men to take defensive positions on the hills and ridges surrounding the town. When Hill’s troops marched toward the town from the west, Buford’s men were waiting. Confederates had driven the Union troops from Gettysburg and had taken control of the town. -
Income Tax
As the Northern economy grew, Congress decided to help pay for the war by collecting the nation’s first income tax, a tax that takes a specified percentage of an individual’s income. -
Conscription
A draft that forced men to serve in the army. In the North, conscription led to draft riots, the most violent of which took place in New York City. -
Sherman's March
William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the military division of the Mississippi. In the spring of 1864, Sherman began his march southeast through Georgia to the sea, creating a wide path of destruction. His army burned almost every house in its path and destroyed live-stock and railroads. By mid-November he had burned most of Atlanta. After reaching the ocean, Sherman’s forces followed by 25,000 former slaves turned north to help Grant. -
Surrender at Appomattox Court House
Virginia town called Appomattox Court House, Lee and Grant met at a private home to arrange a Confederate surrender. At Lincoln’s request, the terms were generous. Grant paroled Lee’s soldiers and sent them home with their possessions and three days’ worth of rations. Officers were permitted to keep their side arms. Within a month all remaining Confederate resistance collapsed. After four long years, the Civil War was over. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, a 26-year-old actor and Southern sympathizer assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. -
Thirteenth Amendment
The U.S. Constitution now stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
