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Missouri Compromise
the Missouri Compromise was a line that divided free states from slave states. -
Nat Turner Slave Rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion, also known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. The rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were White. -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was issued on August 8th, 1846 by Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman David Wilmot. It prohibited the expansion of slavery into any territory acquired by the United States from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War settlement. -
War with Mexico
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervencion of U.S on Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 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
Fugitive Slave Acts, in U.S. history, statutes passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 (and repealed in 1864) that provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a federal territory. -
Publication of 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 two volumes 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 [American] Civil War." -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. In all, some 55 people were killed between 1855 and 1859. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for, or Tragic Prelude to, the Civil War. -
Abraham Lincoln elected president
The Election of 1860 demonstrated the divisions within the United States just before the Civil War. The Constitutional Union Party was also new; 1860 was the first and only time the party ran a candidate for president. The results of the 1860 election pushed the nation into war. -
South Carolina secedes
South Carolina became the first state to secede from the federal Union on December 20, 1860. The secession of South Carolina precipitated the outbreak of the American Civil War in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. -
Formation of the Confederate State of America
The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized state in North America that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised U.S. states that declared secession from the United States and fought against the Union during the American Civil War. -
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on an artificial island protecting Charleston, South Carolina, from naval invasion. Its origin dates to the War of 1812 when the British invaded Washington by sea. It was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle of Fort Sumter began the American Civil War. -
Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, or Battle of Sharpsburg particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek. -
Vicksburg
The siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. -
Gettysburg campaign
The Gettysburg campaign was a military invasion of Pennsylvania by the main Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee in summer 1863. The Union won a decisive victory at Gettysburg, July 1–3, with heavy casualties on both sides. Lee managed to escape back to Virginia with most of his army. -
Appomattox Courthouse
On April 9, 1865, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia signaled the end of the nation's largest war. Two important questions about its future were answered.