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Missouri Compromise
Behind the leadership of Henry Clay, Congress passed a series of agreements in 1820–1821 known as the Missouri Compromise. Under these agreements, Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. The rest of the Louisiana Territory was split into two parts. The dividing line was set at 36°30´ north latitude. South of the line, slavery was legal. North of the line—except in Missouri—slavery was banned. -
Santa Fe Trail
The settlers and traders who made the trek west used a series of old Native American trails as well as new routes. One of the busiest routes was the Santa Fe Trail, which stretched 780 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe in the Mexican province of New Mexico. Each spring from 1821 through the 1860s, American traders loaded their covered wagons with goods and set off toward Santa Fe. -
San Felipe de Austin
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. The main settlement of the colony was named San Felipe de Austin, in Stephen’s honor. -
The Liberator
The most radical white abolitionist wrote 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: immediate emancipation. -
Mexico abolishes slavery
The overwhelmingly Protestant Anglo settlers spoke English instead of Spanish. Furthermore, many of the 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
Forten was joined in his opposition to slavery by a growing number of Americans in the 19th century. Abolition, the movement to abolish slavery, became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Some slaves rebelled against their condition of bondage. One of the most prominent rebellions was led by Virginia slave Nat Turner. Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. -
Stephen F. Austin goes to jail
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
Santa Anna suspended local powers in Texas and other Mexican states, several rebellions broke out, including one that would be known as the Texas Revolution. When Austin returned to Texas in 1835, he was convinced that war was its “only resource.” Determined to force Texas to obey Mexican law. -
Oregon Trail
The 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. Following the Whitmans’ lead, many pioneers migrated west on the Oregon Trail. -
Manifest Destiny
In the 1840s, expansion fever gripped the country. Many Americans began to believe that their movement westward was predestined by God. The phrase “manifest destiny” expressed the belief that the United States was ordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican and Native American territory. Many Americans also believed that this destiny was manifest, or obvious and inevitable. -
Texas enters the United States
In 1844, Congress finally agreed to annex the territory of Texas. Texas entered the United States as a slave state, broadening the irrepressible differences in the United States over the issue of slavery and setting off the Mexican-American War. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. -
The North Star
The North Star wrote Frederick Douglass.Hoping that abolition could be achieved without violence, Douglass broke with Garrison, who believed that abolition justified whatever means were necessary to achieve it.Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper. He named it The North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The United States and Mexico signed the 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. The United States agreed to pay $15 million for the Mexican cession, which included present day California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors was Harriet Tubman. 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. -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay worked to shape a compromise that both the North and the South could accept.To please the North, 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. To placate both sides, a provision allowed popular sovereignty, the right to vote for or against slavery, for residents of the New Mexico and Utah territories.The Senate rejected the proposed compromise. -
Fugitive Slave Act
This fugitive slave law. The harsh conditions of this Law. Under the law, 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. 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. -
Underground Railroad
Attempting to escape from slavery was a dangerous process. Often it meant going without food for days at a time. As time went on, free African Americans and white abolitionists developed a secret network of people who would, at great risk to themselves, hide fugitive slaves. The system of escape routes they used became known as the Underground Railroad. -
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 "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. -
Kankas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas and Nebraska territory lay north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30’ and therefore was legally closed to slavery. Douglas introduced a bill in Congress , 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. Some Northern congressmen saw the bill as part of a plot to turn the territories into slave states. -
Dread Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857.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
Several months after the Dred Scott decision, one of Illinois’s greatest political contests got underway: the race for the U.S. Senate between Democratic incumbent Stephen Douglas and Republican challenger Congressman Abraham Lincoln. Douglas believed deeply in popular sovereignty. Lincoln, on the other hand, believed that slavery was immoral. Douglas won the Senate seat, but his response had widened the split in the Democratic Party. -
John Brown's raid / Harpers Ferry
John Brown the abolitionist.On the night of he led a band of 21 men, black and white, into Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). His aim was to seize the federal arsenal there and start a general slave uprising. -
Abraham Lincoln becomes president
In the November 1860 election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Breckinridge and Bell. The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publicly threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House. -
Formation of the Confederacy
Formation of the Confederacy president was Abraham Lincoln.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, or Confederacy. -
Attack on Fort Sumter
By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, only four Southern forts remained in Union hands. The most important was Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbor. Lincoln decided to neither abandon Fort Sumter nor reinforce it. Confederate batteries began thundering away to the cheers of Charleston’s citizens. The deadly struggle between North and South was under way. -
Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as Battle of First Manassas, was fought on July 21, 1861.It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. Fortunately for the Union, the Confederates were too exhausted to follow up their victory with an attack on Washington. Still, Confederate morale soared. Many Confederate soldiers, confident that the war was over, left the army and went home. -
Conscription
The Confederacy had far fewer inhabitants than the Union, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis proposed the first conscription act.Sweeping changes occurred in the wartime economies of both sides as well as in the roles played by African Americans and women. -
Battle at Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, was fought on September 17, 1862. It was the first Field army-level engagement in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It is the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln issued his 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." -
Battle at Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought, 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. Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's attempt to invade the North. -
Battle at Vicksburg
This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the Confederacy was effectively split in half. Grant's successes in the West boosted his reputation, leading ultimately to his appointment as General-in-Chief of the Union armies. -
Income Tax
When white male workers went out on strike, employees hired free blacks, immigrants, and women to replace them for lower wages. 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. -
Gettysburg address
The ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery in Gettysburg. There, President Lincoln spoke for a little more than two minutes. According to some contemporary historians, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address “remade America.” Before Lincoln’s speech, people said, “The United States are . . .” Afterward, they said, “The United States is . . .” In other words, the speech helped the country to realize that it was not just a collection of individual states; it was one unified nation. -
Sherman's March
Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman’s soldiers did not destroy any of the towns in their path, but they stole food and livestock and burned the houses and barns of people who tried to fight back. -
Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) 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. -
Surrender at Appomattox Court House
On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his approximately 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
United States President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday,while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre as the American Civil War was drawing to a close.
