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Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" shall be free."September 1862, the main focus of the war had been to preserve the Union. With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation freedom for slaves now became a legitimate war aim. -
Reconstruction in the South
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges.After 1867, an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The K.K.K. and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and black. -
The Civil War
The Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865. 620,000 people died.The American Civil War was the most deadly and arguably the most important event in the nation's history.The civil war was fought between the Union states (Northern states) of the United States and the states of the Confederacy (Southern States). There were many causes of the civil war, including differences between northern and southern states on the idea of slavery, as well as trade, tariffs, and states rights. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, shortly after 10 p.m. on April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes entered the presidential box at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., and shot President Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln lean forward in his seat, Wilkes escaped through the back door. A doctor in the audience rushed over to examine the paralyzed president.But he died the next morning. -
Passage of the 15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
Spanish American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, the result of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. Although the main issue was Cuban independence, the ten-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. -
Annexation oh Hawaii
When the U.S got serious about looking out its own borders to own new lands, much of the world had already been claimed. Only a few distant territories in Africa and Asia and remote islands in the Pacific remained free from imperial grasp. Hawaii was one such plum. Led by a hereditary monarch, the inhabitants of the kingdom prevailed as an independent state. American expansionists looked with greed on the strategically located islands and waited patiently to plan their move. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 145 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history -
Ludlow Massacre
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Some two dozen people, including women and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident. -
U.S. declares war on Germany
On December 11, 1941, the United States Congress declared war upon Germany, in response to that nation's declaration of war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and only hours after Germany declared war on the United States.
