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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
Compromise Of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´ -
Dred Scott Decision
On this day in 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories. The doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
Election Of 1860
United States presidential election of 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. -
Fort Sumter is fired upon
Confederate guns around the harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. At 2:30pm on April 13th, Major Robert Anderson, garrison commander, surrendered the fort and was evacuated the next day. The Union would not recapture Fort Sumter for nearly four years. -
Secession Of Southern States
The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed. Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union. -
Battle of Bull Run
Prelude to the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) By July 1861, two months after Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War, the northern press and public were eager for the Union Army to make an advance on Richmond ahead of the planned meeting of the Confederate Congress there on July 20. -
Battle At Shiloh
Also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, the Battle of Shiloh was one of the major early engagements of the American Civil War. The battle began when the Confederates launched a surprise attack on Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant in southwestern Tennessee. -
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Seven Days' Battle
The Seven Days Battle or Seven Days Campaign took place from June 25 to July 1, 1862 and featured six different battles along the Virginia Peninsula east of Richmond. The Union Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also called the Battle of Sharpsburg, at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It pitted Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia against Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and was the culmination of Lee’s attempt to invade the north. The battle’s outcome would be vital to shaping America’s future, and it remains the deadliest one-day battle in all American military history. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the 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 Vicksburg
From the spring of 1862 until July 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-65), Union forces waged a campaign to take the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which lay on the east bank of the Mississippi River, halfway between Memphis to the north and New Orleans to the south. The Siege of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy and proved the military genius of Union General Ulysses S. Grant -
South Surrenders
At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War -
Lincoln's Assassination
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, murderous attack on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., Shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning.
