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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. -
Abolition
The movement to abolish slavery. It became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors that fled to freedom and came back to help other slaves. She made 19 trips back to the south and helped 300 slaves flee to freedom. -
Santa Fe Trail
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. -
San Felipe de Austin
It was the main settlement of the colony that was established in 1821 by Stephen F. Austin's father. He had received a land grant from Spain to establish a colony between the Brazos and Colorado rivers. -
The Liberator
William Lloyd 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
Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, insisted in vain that the Texans free their slaves. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Turner 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
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 gains its independence from Mexico -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail stretched from Missouri to 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. -
Manifest Destiny
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
President Polk believed that the war with mexico would bring taxes into the union. When Polk heard this news, he ordered the US troops into the territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River that the United States claimed its own. -
Mexican-American War
Mexico claimed the Nueces River as its northeastern border, while the U.S. claimed the Rio Grande River, and the day that both troops met at the Rio Grande and the Mexican army opened fire, on April 25, 1846, the Mexican American War began. -
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. -
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 presentday California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay's compromise contained provisions to appease Northerners as well as Southerners. 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. -
Fugitive Slave Act
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. -
Underground railroad
The system of escape routes African Americans used to escape from slavery. “Conductors” on the routes hid fugitives in secret tunnels and false cupboards, provided them with food and clothing and escorted or directed them to the next “station.” -
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. As a young girl, Stowe had watched boats filled with people on their way to be sold at slave markets. Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressed her
lifetime hatred of slavery. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Douglas introduced a law that divides the area into two territories: Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. It repels the Missouri Compromise and establishes popular sovereignty for both territories. -
Dread Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave whose owner took him from
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 and a free territory had made him a free man. Supreme Court ruled against him. -
Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Debates
They debated on the issue of slavery in the territories. Neither wanted slavery in the territories, but they disagreed on how to keep it out. Douglas believed deeply in popular sovereignty. Lincoln, on the other hand, believed that slavery was immoral. Douglas won the Senate seat. -
John Brown’s raid/Harpers Ferry
John Brown 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
Although he pledged to halt the further spread of slavery, he also
tried to reassure Southerners that a Republican administration would not “interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves.” -
Attack on Fort Sumter
At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, 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 location of the first bloodshed on the battlefield. Many Confederate soldiers, confident that the war was over, left the army and went home. -
Formation of the Confederacy
Delegates from Mississippi, South Carolina. Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they formed the Confederate States of America, or Confederacy. The Confederates then unanimously elected former
senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president. -
Battle at Antietam
September 17, the clash proved to be the bloodiest
single-day battle in American history, with casualties totaling more than 26,000. McClellan did nothing and was removed by Lincoln. -
Battle at Gettysburg
The most decisive battle of the war was fought. Began when Confederate soldiers led by A. P. Hill encountered
several brigades of Union cavalry under the command of John Buford. 23,000 Union men and 28,000 Confederates were killed or wounded. Total casualties were more than 30 percent. -
Gettysburg address
A ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery in Gettysburg. There Lincoln's speech helped the country to realize that it was not just a collection of individual states; it was one unified nation. -
Battle at Vicksburg
Grant tried several schemes to reach Vicksburg and take it
from the Confederates. Confederate command of Vicksburg asked Grant for terms of surrender.The city fell on July 4. -
Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. It gave the war a moral purpose by turning the struggle into a fight to free the slaves. It also ensured that compromise was no longer possible. -
Sherman’s March
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 livestock and railroads. He burned most of Atlanta -
Surrender at Appomattox Court House
In a 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 crept up behind Lincoln and shot the president in the back of his head 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.” -
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.
