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Wilmot Proviso
Wilmot Proviso, in U.S. history, is an important congressional proposal in the 1840s to prohibit the extension of slavery into the territories. Soon after the Mexican War, President James K. Polk asked Congress for $2,000,000 to negotiate peace and settle the boundary with Mexico. A Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot offered an amendment to the bill forbidding slavery in the new territory, thus creating a large National debate. -
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Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War was a war in which America and Mexico fought over where the border of Texas ended. America was victorious, and gained over 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory, extending from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was between America and Mexico, and ended the Mexican-American war. It was signed at a city in Northern Mexico, and it drew the boundary between America and Mexico at the Rio Grande. For a payment of $15,000,000, America received over 500,000 square miles, including the territories of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas. -
Mexican Secession
The Mexican Secession was when Mexico sold the areas of the modern Southwestern US to America. This was the third largest land acquisition in US history. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was an effort to settle slavery issues and to alert the threat of dissolution in the Union by Henry Clay. The conflict arose when California wished to be admitted to the union, with a constitution prohibiting slavery. -
Fugitive Slave Law
The Fugitive Slave Law provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a federal territory. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, provided for the territorial organization of Kansas and Nebraska under the principle of popular sovereignty, which had been applied to New Mexico and Utah in the Compromise of 1850. -
"Bleeding Kansas"
"Bleeding Kansas" was a small civil war in the United States, fought between proslavery and antislavery advocates for control of the new territory of Kansas under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on U.S. labor law and constitutional law. It held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into the U.S. and sold as slaves," whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen, and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. -
Lincoln-Douglas 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. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois General Assembly. -
Raid of Harpers Ferry
The raid on Harpers Ferry was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia—an enterprise that had won moral and financial support from several prominent Bostonians. It was an assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armory located at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia). It was a main precipitating incident to the American Civil War. -
Election of 1860
The Election of 1860 was a presidential election in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery, and in the months following Lincoln’s election, seven Southern states, led by South Carolina, seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War, at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Although Fort Sumter held no strategic value to the North—it was unfinished and its guns faced the sea rather than Confederate shore batteries—it held enormous value as a symbol of the Union. -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam was a decisive engagement in the American Civil War that halted the Confederate advance on Maryland for the purpose of gaining military supplies. The advance was also regarded as one of the greatest Confederate threats to Washington, D.C. While technically a Union victory, as the Confederacy withdrew from the field, it was for Lee a remarkable escape from a perilous position that enabled him to fight on for another two and half years. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was edict issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the slaves of the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union. -
Battlre of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was a major battle of the American Civil War. It took place in Mississippi from May 18 to July 4, 1863. Union general Ulysses S. Grant surrounded the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Confederate Army, commanded by John C. Pemberton, surrendered on July 4. Thus, the Union forces controlled the Mississippi River. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was a major engagement in the American Civil War, that was a crushing Southern defeat. After defeating the Union forces of Gen. Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, Virginia, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee decided to invade the North. His invasion army numbered more than 71,000 troops. However, General John Buford, recognized the strategic importance of Gettysburg as a road center and was prepared to hold this site until reinforcements arrived. -
Election of 1864
The Election of 1864 was an American presidential election held on Nov. 8, 1864, in which Republican President Abraham Lincoln defeated Democrat George B. McClellan. As the election occurred during the American Civil War, it was contested only by the states that had not seceded from the Union. Nevertheless, Lincoln was elected. -
Lincoln's Assassination
A murderous attack on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was made 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. The assassination occurred only days after the surrender at Appomattox Court House of Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant, which had signaled the effective end of the American Civil War. -
Freedmen's Bureau
The Freedmen's Bureau was created in 1865 during the Lincoln administration, by an act of Congress called the Freedman's Bureau Bill. It was passed on March 3, 1865, in order to aid former slaves through food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with private landowners. -
Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States formally abolished slavery. Although the words slavery and slave are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment abrogated those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the “peculiar institution”: -
Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act was a comprehensive U.S. legislation intended to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin (It is hard to describe without being too specific). -
Military Reconstruction Act
The Military Reconstruction Act was a 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. The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress. Essentially, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 turned the South into a conquered military state, which mainly divided the South into five regions, each governed by a Union general. -
Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” In all, the amendment comprises five sections, four of which began in 1866 as separate proposals that stalled in legislative process and were amalgamated into a single amendment. -
Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The amendment complemented and followed in the wake of the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments, which abolished slavery and guaranteed citizenship, respectively, to African Americans. -
Election of 1876
The United States presidential election of 1876 was the 23rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1876. It was one of the most contentious and controversial presidential elections in American history, and is known for being the catalyst for the end of Reconstruction. Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel Tilden. After a controversial post-election process, Hayes was declared the winner. -
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.