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First issue of The Liberator
The Liberator was an abolitionist newspaper, founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp. 3,000 people were subscribed to the newspaper, and 3/4 of them were African Americans. In the first article it talked about how all people are equal. -
Compromise of 1850
Brought by Senator Henry Clay. In 1849 California asked permission to enter the Union as a free state. An attempt to seek a compromise between North and South. Part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C. was abolished. So, California entered the Union as a free state. An act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government in New Mexico. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin published
Uncle Tom's Cabin/Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. One million copies in Great Britain -
James Buchanan sworn into office 15th president
He represented Pennsylvania in the United States House of Representatives and later the Senate, then served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. Buchanan was nominated by the Democratic Party in the 1856 presidential election. After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Ambassador to the United Kingdom, -
Dred Scott Decision
U.S. Supreme Court ruled (7–2) that Dred Scott who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby entitled to his freedom and that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States and that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war. -
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
By white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt by taking over a US arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 21 men in his party, was defeated by a platoon of U.S. Marines. -
South Carolina seceded from Union
The Civil War began in South Carolina. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina, having the highest percentage of slaves of any U.S. state at 57% of its population enslaved and 46% of its families owning at least one slave, became the first state to declare that it had seceded from the Union. -
Lincoln President
16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. -
Battle at Fort Sumter begins
The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–14, 1861) was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the US Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. -
Emancipation Proclemation
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 of GettysBurg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's attempt to invade the North. The Union Won. -
Sherman's march to Sea
The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces destroyed military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupted the Confederacy's economy and its transportation networks. Sherman's bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be revolutionary in the annals of war. -
The Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse
The Battle of Appomattox Court House was one of the last battles of the American Civil War. . Lee launched an attack to break through the Union force to his front, assuming the Union force consisted entirely of cavalry. When he realized that the cavalry was backed up by two corps of Union infantry, he had no choice but to surrender. The signing of the surrender documents occurred in the parlor of the house owned by Wilmer McLean on the afternoon of April 9. -
Lincoln's Assasination Courthouse
Anticipating the war's conclusion, Lincoln pushed a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. On April 14, 1865, five days after the April 9th surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Allowed people in Kansas and Nebraska to decide themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820. -
Battle of Bull Run
he First Battle of Bull Run, also known as Battle of First Manassas was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, near the city of Manassas, not far from Washington, D.C. It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops in their first battle. It was a Confederate victory followed by a disorganized retreat of the Union forces. First part of the Battle of Bull Run ended July 22nd.