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Missouri Compromise 1820-1821
Settlers requested admission to the Union. Northerners and Southerners disagreed whether Missouri should be amitted as free state or slave state. Leader Henry Clay passed series of agreements, Maine became a free state and Missouri a slave state, Louisiana Territory was split in two dividing at the 36'30. South of the line slavery was legal and the North illegal. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors, she made 19 trips back to the South and is said to have helped 300 slaves—including her own parents—flee to freedom. -
Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe Trail was one of the busiest routes which stretched 780 miles from independence, Missouri to Santa Fe in the Mexican province of New Mexico. -
San Felipe de Austin
A prominet colony made in 1821 in Stephen's honor. Stephen F. Austin received a land grant and went to Mexico to establish a colony later to become Texas. -
The Liberator
The most radical white abolitionist was a young editor named William Lloyd Garrison. 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
Conflicting cultures in Texas between Americans and Mexicans surfaced. Many Southerners brought slaves which conflicts with Mexico's views. -
Abolition
Abolition, the movement to abolish slavery, became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. -
Underground Railroad
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. -
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. -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail stretched from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman proved wagons could travel the trail. -
Texas Revolution
The 1836 rebellion in which Texas gained its
independence from Mexico. -
Manifest Destiny
Many Americans began to believe that their movement westward was predestined by God. Most Americans had practical reasons for moving west, for land, markets, and to get away from personal economic problems in the East. -
Texas enters the United States
Texans hoped to join the Union to extend slavery but Northerners worried of more slave states and the unblance in the Senate in favor of the slave states. -
Mexican-American War
First U.S. war fought on foregin land. President James K. Polk wanted to expand U.S. territory and but was rejected when attempting to buy land, he later moved troops into the disputed zone between the Rio Grande and Nueces River. -
The North Star
Frederick Douglass, who escaped from bondage to become an eloquent and outspoken critic of slavery.Douglass began his own
antislavery newspaper. He named it The North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom. He hoped to abolish slavery with out 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. The U.S. gave $15 million for the Mexican cession. -
Compromise of 1850
Concerns was the border dispute in which the slave state of Texas claimed the eastern half of the New Mexico Territory, where the issue of slavery had not yet been settled. Henry Clay worked to shape a compromise that both the North and the South could accept. California became a free state for the North, while Southerners had new fugitive slave law -
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. Infuriated by the Fugitive Slave Act, some Northerners resisted it by organizing “vigilance committees” to send endangered African Americans to safety in Canada. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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. Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressed her lifetime hatred of slavery. The book stirred Northern abolitionists to increase their protests against the Fugitive Slave Act. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
To decide whether slavery would be allowed in the Nebraska Territory. The act divided the area into two territories: Nebraska in the North adn Kansas in theSouth. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave whose owner took him to appeal the the Supreme Court for his freedom. They ruled against him saying he lacked any legal standing to sue in federal court because he was not a citizen. -
Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Debates
Neither wanted slavery in the terriories, 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, but his response had widened the split in the Democratic Party. As for Lincoln, his attacks on the “vast moral evil” of slavery drew national
attention -
John Brown’s raid/Harpers Ferry
John Brown 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. Instead troops put down the rebellion, and put Brown to death. -
Abraham Lincoln becomes president
Lincoln pledge to halt 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.” Nonetheless, many Southerners viewed him as an enemy -
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. -
Formation of the Confederacy
South Carolina, Missippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas drew up aconstitution that closely resembled that of the United States, but with a few notable differences. The most important difference was that it “protected and recognized” slavery in new territories.The Confederates then unanimously elected former
senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president -
Attack on Fort Sumter
As soon as the Condederacy was formed, Confederate soldiers began seizing federal installations. Confederate batteries began thundering away to the cheers of Charleston' citizens. -
Battle of Bull Run
First bloodshed on the battlefield, near a little creek of Bull Run. Thomas J. Jackson nicknamed Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate leader helpeed lead the them. In the end they loss due to high exhaustion. -
Battle at Antietam
Generals Robert E. Lee and George McClellan faced off near Antietam creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland, 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. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The proclamation did not free any slaves immediately because it applied only to areas behind Confederate lines, outside Union control. Nevertheless, for many, the proclamation 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. -
Battle at Vicksburg
Union general Ulysses S. Grant fought to take Vicksburg, one of the two remaining Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River. The city fell on July 4. Five days later Port Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate holdout on the Mississippi, also fell. The Union had achieved another of its major military objectives, and the Confederacy was cut in two. -
Battle at Gettysburg
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. The shooting attracted more troops and both sides called for reinforcements. By the end of the first day of fighting, 90,000 Union troops under the command of General George Meade had taken the field against 75,000 Confederates, led by General Lee. -
Gettysburg address
A 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.” -
Sherman’s March
William Tecumseh Sherman led an army to make a path of destruction to make Southeners so sick of war they'll stop fighting in wars again. Had over 25,000 former slaves in the army. Turned North to help Grant "wipe out Lee." -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth—a 26-year-old actor and Southern sympathizer killed Lincoln when he and his wife attended a play. -
Surrender at 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. -
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.”
