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William Lloyd Garrison Published The Liberator
The Liberator weekly newspaper of abolitionist crusader Garrison was the most influential antislavery periodical in the pre-Civil War period of US History -
Nat Turner Slave Revolt
A slave rebellion that took place in Southhampton County, Virginia. Led by Nat Turner. Rebel slaves killed about 60 to 65 people. -
American Anti-Slavery Society Begins
An abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. -
Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women published
She 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"
Basically says that slaves must rebel in some way to secure their freedom. He states that the slaves had hoped that a day would come when they would be freed -
Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
Launched an organized Amercian women's movement separate from the anti slavery movement. It convenes with almost 200 women in attendance. Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. -
Harriett Tubman Escapes from Slavery
in 1849, following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Harriet Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value. -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. -
Fugitive Slave Act
Statutes passed by Congress that provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a federal territory. -
Sojourner Truth Delivered her "Ain't I a Woman" Speech
This speech became one of the most famous abolitionist and women's rights speeches in American history. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Published Uncle Tom's Cabin
An anti slavery novel that had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the US and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War" -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas 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
Passed by the US Congress and 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
The first statewide convention that formed a platform and nominated candidates under the name Republican was held near Jackson, Michigan. It declared their new party opposed to the expansion of slavery into new territories and selected a statewide slate of candidates. -
Creation of the Radical Republicans
They believed that black people 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 -
Lincoln Assassination
The assassination was a murderous attack on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, on the evening of April 14, 1865. Shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning. -
Dred Scott Decision
A supreme court case in which a slave, Dred Scott, tried to sue for his freedom on the grounds that his master moved him to a free territory. SLaves are not citizens and therefore have no legal right to sue. -
Lecompton Constitution
Instrument framed in Lecompton, Kansas, by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slave holding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the US 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 interconnections of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis began in late 1857. -
Lincoln-Douglass Debates
The issues discussed between the candidates during the debates were important. Slavery had become a major political issue. Douglas was an incumbent senator who had established himself as a supported of popular sovereignty on the subject of slavery. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
In the election fo 1860, the democratic party split into two, Northern and Southern. By the late 1850s, the party split over the issue of slavery. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the US. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
Lincoln was elected as the 16th president of the US, beating Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. He was the first president from the Republican Party. -
Confederate States of America Founded
States meet to form Confederacy in February 1861, representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy's first president. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
The first battle of the American Civil War. The intense Confederate artillery bombardment of Major Robert Anderson's small Union garrison in the unfinished fort in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, had been preceded by months of siege-like conditions. -
Battle of Antietam
Over 23,000 men fell as casualties in the one-day Battle of Antietam, making it the bloodiest day in American history. The Union victory at Antietam resulted in President Abraham Lincoln issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. -
Battle of Gettysburg
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. -
Gettysburg Address
A speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln, dedication of Soldier's National Cemetery, a cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. -
Emancipation Proclamation
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" -
General US Grant Assumed Command of Union Troops
Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoted then-Major General Ulysses S Grant to the rank of lieutenant genral of the US Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army. -
Abraham Lincoln Reelected
First time since 1812 that a presidential election took place during a war. Lincoln himself believed he had little chance of being re elected. -
Lee Surrended to Grant at Appomattox Court House
Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S Grant but the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court Hose, which last only a few hours, effectively brought the four year Civil War to an end. -
Johnson Announced Plans for Presidential Reconstruction
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 politics of the South. The end of the Civil War found the nation without a settled Reconstruction policy. -
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman, a general in the Union army during the American Civil War, is best known for his March to the Sea. Sherman and his army captured Atlanta, Georgia, an important transportation center in the Confederacy. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
Andrew Johnson Became President
The 17th president assumed office after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. JOhnson served from 1865 to 1869 and was the first American president to be impeached. A tailor before he entered politics, Johnson grew up poor and lacked a formal education -
Ku Klux Klan Formed
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Freedman's Bureau Established
Establshed by Congress as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands to aid and protect former slaves after the end of the war -
Arrival of Scalawags and Carpetbaggers in the South
The term carpetbaggers refers to the 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. -
Civil Rights Act Passed over Johnsons veto
Congress overrides veto to enact civil right sbill. A republican-domincated Congress enacted a landmark civil rights act. The law's chief thrust was to offer protection to slaves freed in the aftermath of the civil war -
First Congressional Reconstruction Act passed
TO further safeguard voting rights for former slaves, Republicans passed the Second Act, placing union troops in charge of voter registration -
14th Amendment 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 Johnson Impeached
The result of political conflict and the supture of ideologies in the aftermath of the American Civil War. -
U.S. Grant Elected President
He commanded the victorious Union army during the American Civil War and served as the 18th US president -
15th Amendment Ratified
This amendment contained 2 sections. Section on stated that "the right of citizens..to vote shall not be denied or abridge.. on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" -
Slaughterhouse Cases
A legal dispute that resulted in a landmark US Supreme Court decision in 1873 limiting the protection of the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. -
U.S. v. Cruikshank
A Supreme Court case that led to an allowance of violence and deprivation of rights against the newly freed slaves. Their citizenship rights, equal protections of the law, and several other Fourteenth Amendment provisions were being deprived. -
Period of "Redemption" after the Civil War
White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags -
Compromise of 1877
Was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely dispute 1876 US presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era
