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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-1800s, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states and Canada. The scheme was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. -
Abolition
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. This term can be used both formally and informally. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and set slaves free.
From the 1830s until 1870 -
The Liberator
The Liberator was a weekly abolitionist newspaper, published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves.
First issue date: January 1, 1831 -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion (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. -
The North Star
The North Star was a nineteenth-century anti-slavery newspaper published from the Talman Building in Rochester, New York by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The paper commenced publication on December 3, 1847 and ceased as The North Star in June 1851 when it merged with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper (based in Syracuse, New York) to form Frederick Douglass' Paper. The North Star's slogan was "Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and all we are Brethren." -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo in Spanish), officially titled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic,is the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo (now a neighborhood of Mexico City) between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The treaty came into force on July 4, 1848. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. -
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. -
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". -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
The decision was made in the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, which was a slave-holding state, into the Missouri Territory, most of which had been designated "free" territory by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. -
Lincoln- Douglas Presidential Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.
Dates: Aug 21, 1858 – Oct 15, 1858 -
John Brown's raid/ Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an 1859 effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in Southern states by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for the Civil War. -
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. -
Abraham Lincoln becomes president
Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. ... Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union -
Income Tax
An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities that varies with respective income or profits. Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times taxable income. Taxation rates may vary by type or characteristics of the taxpayer. The tax rate may increase as taxable income increases. -
Formation of Confederacy
On February 4, 1861, the states farthest south, where slavery and plantations agriculture were dominant, formed the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as President. They established their capital at Montgomery, Alabama and took over federal forts on their territory. -
Attack on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War. -
Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas, was the first major battle of the American Civil War and was a Confederate victory. -
Battle of Antietam
General Lee had hoped to defeat the Union on Union soil and force the North to give up on the war. The Union won the Battle of Antietam, although both sides experienced heavy casualties. With 23,000 casualties, this was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. -
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." -
Battle at Vicksburg
The siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War.
On May and June of 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's armies converged on Vicksburg, investing the city and entrapping a Confederate army under Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. -
Battle at Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. -
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. -
Sherman's March
From November 15 until December 21, 1864, 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. Union Victory -
Surrender at Appomattox Court House
On April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, 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. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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. -
Thirteenth Amendment
DescriptionThe Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. -
Conscription
The 1940 law instituted conscription in peacetime, requiring the registration of all men between 19 and 57, to be automatically conscripted. President Roosevelt's signing of the Selective Training and Service Act on September 16, 1940, began the first peacetime draft in the United States. ... Roosevelt named Lewis B.
