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Nat Turners Slave Revolt
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. Rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, at least 51 being white. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. -
William Lloyd Garrison Published the Liberator
The Liberator, weekly newspaper of abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison for 35 years (January 1, 1831–December 29, 1865). It was the most influential antislavery periodical in the pre-Civil War period of U.S. history. Although The Liberator, published in Boston, could claim a paid circulation of only 3,000, it reached a much wider audience with its uncompromising advocacy of immediate emancipation for the millions of black Americans held in bondage throughout the South. -
American Anti-Slavery Society begins
he American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS; 1833–1870) was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was also a freed slave who often spoke at meetings. -
Sarah Grimmke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women Published
In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman of 1838, (initally published as a series of letters in a newspaper) Sarah Grimké responded to Catharine Beecher's defense of the subordinate role of women. ... First was the notion that women were subordinate to men by God's decree. -
Henry Highland Garnet's "Address to the Slaves of the United States of America"
first read at the National Convention
held at Buffalo, N.Y., in 1843. Since that time it has been slightly
modified, retaining, however, all of its original doctrine. The document
elicited more discussion than any other paper that was ever
brought before that, or any other deliberative body of colored persons,
and their friends. -
women's rights convention at Seneca Falls
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days over July 19–20, 1848. -
Harriett Tubman Escapes from Slavery
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. In 1849, following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Harriet Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. -
Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, 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. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Harriett Beecher Stowe Published 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 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 Civil War" -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. 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´. -
Republican Party Founded
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott case". -
Lecompton Constitution
Lecompton Constitution, (1857), instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. -
Panic of 1857
The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the interconnectedness of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis that began in late 1857 was the first worldwide economic crisis. -
Lincoln-Douglass Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
Harpers Ferry Raid, (October 16–18, 1859), assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armoury located at Harpers Ferry, -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
he Democratic Party became so divided that they ran two candidates in the election of 1860: Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, while southern Democrats nominated John Breckinridge. This split the Democratic ticket in half, giving the Republicans, who nominated Abraham Lincoln, a huge advantage. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. He was the first president from the Republican Party. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. -
Empancipation 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."Jan 5, 2018 -
Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address, world-famous speech delivered by Pres. Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (November 19, 1863) of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil War (July 1–3, 1863). -
General U.S. Grant Assumed Command of Union Troops
On this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoting then-Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army. -
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. -
Abraham Lincoln Reelected
The 1864 election was the first time since 1812 that a presidential election took place during a war. For much of 1864, Lincoln himself believed he had little chance of being re-elected. ... Because of this, McClellan was thought to be a heavy favorite to win the election. -
Confederate States of America founded
Confederate States of America, also called Confederacy, in the American Civil War, the government of 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860–61, carrying on all the affairs of a separate government and conducting a major war until defeated in the spring of 1865. -
Lincoln 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., on the evening of April 14, 1865. Shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. -
Lee Surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
he Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War.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. -
Andrew Johnson Became President
Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. -
Johnson announced Plans for Presidential Reconstruction
In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. -
Arrival of Scalawags and Carpetbaggers in the south
The term “carpetbaggers” refers to Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. Many carpetbaggers were said to have moved South for their own financial and political gains. Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. -
Ku Klux Klan formed
Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, during the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The name was formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κύκλος, circle) with clan. The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". -
Period of "Remdemption" after the Civil War
White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party after the Civil War and during the Reconstruction Era. -
Freedman's Bureau Established
he Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of the United States Department of War to "direct such issues of provisions -
Civil Rights act Passed over Johnson's Veto
Congress overrides veto to enact civil rights bill, April 9, 1866. A Republican-dominated Congress enacted a landmark Civil Rights Act on this day in 1866, overriding a veto by President Andrew Johnson. The law's chief thrust was to offer protection to slaves freed in the aftermath of the Civil War.Apr 8, 2017 -
15th Amendment Ratified
Congress overrides veto to enact civil rights bill, April 9, 1866. A Republican-dominated Congress enacted a landmark Civil Rights Act on this day in 1866, overriding a veto by President Andrew Johnson. The law's chief thrust was to offer protection to slaves freed in the aftermath of the Civil War.Apr 8, 2017 -
First Congress Reconstruction Act passed
Reconstruction Acts. Reconstruction Acts, U.S. legislation enacted in 1867–68 that outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65). The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress. -
14th Amendment Ratified
On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. -
Andrew Jackson Impeached
On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate continues to hear impeachment charges against President Andrew Johnson. The trial, convened by the Senate on March 5, focused on issues surrounding Johnson's post-Civil WarReconstruction policy and, more specifically, his firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. -
U.S Grant elected as president
The United States presidential election of 1868 was the 21st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1868. In the first election of the Reconstruction Era, Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour. -
Creation of the Radical Republicans
The leading Radicals in Congress were Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate. Grant was elected as a Republican in 1868 and after the election he generally sided with the Radicals on Reconstruction policies and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law. -
Slaughterhouse Cases (Supreme Court)
The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), was the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment which had recently been enacted. ... In effect, the amendment was interpreted to convey limited protection pertinent to a small minority of rights. -
U.S. v Cruikshank
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, was an important United States Supreme Court decision in United States constitutional law, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era. -
Sojourner Truth Delivered her "Ain't I a Woman" speech
Sojourner Truth, legal name Isabella Van Wagener, (born c. 1797, Ulster county, N.Y., U.S.—died Nov. 26, 1883, Battle Creek, Mich.), African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervour to the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.
