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The Massacre at Mystic, also known as the Pequot Massacre or Battle of Mystic Fort, was an attack on May 26, 1637, during the Pequot War where English colonists and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies burned a fortified Pequot village, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The event took place in what is now Groton, Connecticut, atop a ridge overlooking the Mystic River -
"The Scalp Act" refers to historical legislation or proclamations in British colonies and early American states that offered financial rewards, or scalp bounties, for the scalps of Indigenous people, particularly from the late 17th through the 19th centuries. These "scalp acts" were a form of state-sponsored violence that encouraged the mass killing of Native Americans and became a commodity -
The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement at the 1787 Constitutional Convention that for the purpose of congressional representation and direct taxation, three-fifths of the enslaved population in a state would be counted in the total population. -
The Fugitive Slave Act refers to two U.S. federal laws passed in 1793 and 1850 that required the capture and return of escaped enslaved people to their owners, even in free states. The 1850 act was a stricter, more controversial version that strengthened the federal government's role in the process and created harsh penalties for those who obstructed its enforcement. -
The Trail of Tears refers to the forced displacement of the Cherokee Nation and other American Indian tribes from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to designated Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) in the 1830s, mandated by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 -
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, between U.S. forces led by William Henry Harrison and Native American warriors led by Tenskwatawa ("The Prophet") at a location near present-day Indiana. -
The Missouri Compromise was a 1820 U.S. law that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, maintaining a balance of power in Congress. It also established the 36°30′ parallel as a dividing line, prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of this latitude, except for Missouri itself. -
The Indian Removal Act, signed into law by U.S. President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorized the forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi River to designated territories in the west -
Nat Turner's Rebellion was the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history, occurring in August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia, when Nat Turner, a deeply religious enslaved man, led a group of 50-70 enslaved and free Black allies in an uprising that killed about 60 white people. The revolt was quickly suppressed by local authorities and militias within a few days, but Nat Turner evaded capture for about ten weeks. -
The Dred Scott Decision was a landmark 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denied U.S. citizenship to Black people, held that Congress could not prohibit slavery in federal territories, and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The case involved Dred Scott, an enslaved man who sued for his freedom after living in free territories, but the Court ruled he was not a citizen and therefore could not sue. -
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. It declared that all people held as slaves in the Confederate states rebelling against the Union "are, and henceforward shall be free". -
Slavery, or chattel slavery, effectively ended in the United States with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude nationwide. This followed the American Civil War (1861–1865), during which President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing enslaved people in rebelling Confederate states. However, the 1863 Proclamation did not immediately end slavery in all states -
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, with the sole exception of punishment for a crime for which an individual has been duly convicted. Passed by Congress in 1865, it was ratified in December of the same year and stands as the first of the three Civil War amendments, which significantly expanded civil rights. -
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, is a post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendment that granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed equal protection of the laws and due process to all citizens. It also prohibits states from making laws that abridge the "privileges or immunities" of citizens and includes provisions to disqualify former Confederate officials from holding office -
The 15th Amendment is a part of the U.S. Constitution that prevents states and the federal government from denying citizens the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Ratified in 1870, it was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments, aimed at establishing the rights of freed African Americans after the Civil War. -
The battle was a momentary victory for the Lakota and Cheyenne. The death of Custer and his troops became a rallying point for the United States to increase their efforts to force native peoples onto reservation lands. -
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, involved nearly three hundred Lakota people killed by soldiers of the United States Army. More than 250 people of the Lakota were killed and 51 wounded. Some estimates placed the number of dead as high as 300. -
Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal" for public facilities. The case involved Homer Plessy, an African American man who challenged a Louisiana state law requiring segregated railway cars.