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The Massacre at Mystic, or the Pequot Massacre, was a brutal event, during the Pequot War, where English colonial forces and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies attacked and destroyed a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River.
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government-sanctioned bounties paid for the scalps of Indigenous people, particularly during the 17th to 19th centuries in North America. These bounties, offered by colonial and later U.S. authorities, incentivized the killing and capture of Native Americans, escalating warfare and contributing to the genocide and extermination of various tribes. -
an agreement at the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention that determined three-fifths of the enslaved population in a state would be counted when calculating the state's total population for the purposes of legislative representation and direct taxation -
The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought on November 7, 1811, between U.S. forces led by William Henry Harrison and Native American warriors associated with Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa -
a legislative agreement that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, maintaining a balance of power in the U.S. Congress between slave and free states. It also prohibited slavery in the remaining territories of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel, a line of latitude that divided the nation. -
the forcible, devastating relocation of thousands of Native Americans, primarily the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to present-day Oklahoma. Authorized by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and implemented under President Andrew Jackson, this displacement was driven by the desire for valuable Native lands, leading to the deaths of thousands from disease, exposure, and exhaustion during their forced journey.
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The Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorized the President to negotiate treaties with Native American tribes for their removal from lands east of the Mississippi River to territory in the west, a policy that resulted in the forced displacement and immense suffering of tens of thousands of Native Americans, most notably through the Trail of Tears. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a bloody uprising of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, led by Nat Turner, a self-styled prophet, in August 1831. The revolt resulted in the deaths of at least 55 white people, though the exact number varies across sources. -
permitted the seizure and return of runaway enslaved people to their owners. The 1793 act was initially passed to resolve interstate disputes over fugitive slaves and allowed slaveowners to claim their "property". -
The Dred Scott Decision was a 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated people of African descent, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States, denying them the right to sue in federal court -
The Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all enslaved people in Confederate-held territory were to be freed -
Slavery ended in the United States with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 6, 1865, which abolished slavery nationwide, though an exemption for punishment for a crime allowed for its continuation in different forms. -
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, with the sole exception of punishment for a crime for which a party has been duly convicted. Passed by Congress in January 1865 and officially proclaimed in effect in December 1865, it was the first explicit mention of slavery in the Constitution. -
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., prohibits states from denying any person life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and forbids states from denying any person equal protection under the law. It also includes clauses that bar individuals who engaged in insurrection against the U.S. from holding office and that regulate how representation in Congress is determined. -
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits denying citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or previous servitude, was ratified on February 3, 1870, and was a landmark victory for African Americans during Reconstruction. Despite its passage, discriminatory practices like poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses prevented many African Americans from exercising their voting rights for nearly a century, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 fully protected these rights. -
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 U.S. Army intercepted a Lakota Sioux group and attempted to disarm them. During the process, a shot was fired—likely accidental—and this led to a violent confrontation. The U.S. soldiers opened fire on the Lakota, resulting in the deaths of approximately 150 to 300 Native Americans, mostly women, children, and elders. -
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was a landmark Supreme Court case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine, ruling that racial segregation was constitutional as long as the facilities provided for each race were equal.