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The Missouri Compromise
a series of agreements passed by Congress in 1820-1821 to maintain the balance of power between slave states and free states. -
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Civil War Timeline
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Underground Railroad
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Between 1840 and 1860, before the American Civil War, enslaved Africans followed the North Star on the Underground Railroad to find freedom in Canada. It was not an actual railroad but a secret network of routes and safe houses that helped people escape slavery and reach free states or Canada. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills passed in the United States in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. -
Dread Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford was issued on March 6, 1857. Delivered by Chief Justice Roger Taney, this opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Illinois, and Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown and several followers seized the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The actions of Brown's men brought national attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery. -
Formation of the Confederacy
The Confederacy was established in the Montgomery Convention in February 1861 (before Lincoln's inauguration in March) and disintegrated in April and May 1865. It was formed by delegations from seven Southern states that had proclaimed their secession from the Union. -
Fort Sumter
Built following the War of 1812, and still not completely finished by 1861, the fort is located in Charleston Harbor, SC. Fort Sumter is best remembered for the Battle of Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the civil war were fired. Once the Confederate States of America took control of Charleston Harbor, they soon aimed costal guns on the fort, and fired. After the battle, 4 more states seceeded, and their was more support for military action. -
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was a United States soldier and statesman, and was the President of the Confederate States of America during the entire Civil War which was fought from 1861 to 1865. -
Bull Run
July 21, 1861- First major battle of the Civil War, in which untrained Northern troops and civilian picnickers fled back to Washington. This battle helped boost Southern morale and made the North realize that this would be a long war. -
Antietam
battle in Maryland that ended Lee's first invasion of the North. Known for being the bloodiest day in the war, and led to the Emancipation Proclamation -
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." -
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. -
Vicksburg
In 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. -
Gettysburg Address
In November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln was invited to deliver remarks, which later became known as the Gettysburg Address, at the official dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, on the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War. -
Sherman's March
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the military Savannah Campaign in the American Civil War, conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. -
Appomattox Court House
The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought on the morning of April 9, 1865, was the final engagement of Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and one of the last battles of the American Civil War. -
Assasination of Abraham Lincoln
on April 14,1865 president went to watch a British comedy (Our American Cousin) in Ford's theatre in washington, and he got assassinated during it's third act by shot from back of his head. -
The Thirteenth Amendment
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "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.