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Election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November 6th 1860. He was also elected the 16th president in the United States.By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded -
secession of southern states
South Carolina was the first to leave the Union and form a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Four months later, six other states seceded. -
Civil war
The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness.The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The emancipation proclamation was written on January 1,1863. While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom. -
Reconsruction
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. -
freedmen's bureau
The Freedmen's Bureau was established by Congress as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands on March 3, 1865, to aid and protect former slaves after the end of the war. Its original charter was for one year. On July 16, 1866, the Bureau was reorganized under the U.S. War Department, which gave it the backing of military force. The 200,000 federal troops occupying the southern states helped establish military law and order. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Shortly after 10 p.m. on April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., and fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was then carried across the street to Petersen's Boarding House, where he died early the next morning. -
13th amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865 -
14th amendment
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. -
Sharecropping
he Reconstruction Acts in 1867, beginning a new phase of Reconstruction. During this period, the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments granted African Americans the right to vote, equality before the law and other rights of citizenship. -
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." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. -
1st African American elected to Congress during Reconstruction
During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any black senators. On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the first black member of the Senate, while Blanche Bruce, also of Mississippi, seated in 1875, was the second. Revels was the first black member of the Congress overall. -
Radical reconstruction
The Radical Republicans believed blacks were entitled to the same political rights and opportunities as whites. They also believed that the Confederate leaders should be punished for their roles in the Civil War. Leaders like Pennsylvania represenitives thaddeus Stevens and Massachusetts Senator Charels Sumner vigorously opposed Andrew Johnson's lenient policies -
civil rights of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat. 335–337), sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service
