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Nat Turner Slave Revolt
Nat Turner’s rebellion was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history and led to a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves. -
William Lloyd Garrison Published The Liberator
The Liberator denounced the Compromise of 1850, condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, damned the Dred Scott decision and hailed John Brown’s raid as “God’s method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant.” -
American Anti-Slavery Society Begins
This society was founded with a plan to reach mass audiences through lecturing, petition drives, and a wide variety of printed materials. -
Sarah Grimke’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women published
The letters were influential and defended the rights of women to speak in public in defense of a moral cause. -
Henry Highland Garnet’s “Address to the Slaves of the United States of America”
In his speech, he calls the listeners to open rebellion; the speech failed by one vote being endorsed by the convention. -
Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
This was the first every women's rights convention held in the United States, resulting in the Ninth resolution, which marked the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in America. -
Harriett Tubman Escapes from Slavery
Tubman escaped slavery and became a leading abolitionist, helping hundreds of enslaved African Americans gai their freedom through the Underground Railroad. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War. -
Fugitive Slave Act
This newly revised slave act forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves, while also denied slaves the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1000 and six months in jail. -
Sojourner Truth Delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman” Speech
Truth's speech was a powerful rebuke to many anti feminist arguments of the day, while it continues to serve, as a classic expression of women’s rights. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The novel demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement, and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements in Kansas. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
This act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory -
Republican Party Founded
A few years after the Whig party disassembled, anti-slavery Whigs began meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party, and in their first presidential candidate won 11 of the 16 Northern states. -
Dred Scott Decision
The decision made in the Dred Scott case affirmed the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, overgoing the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
Lecompton Constitution
The constitution allowed Kansas to be admitted into the union as a slave state, resulting in a citizens vote of 6,226 for slavery and the Lecompton Constitution and 569 against slavery and the Lecompton Constitution. -
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 interconnectedness of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis that began in late 1857 was the first worldwide economic crisis. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The debates were a series of formal political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, in a campaign for one of Illinois' two United States Senate seats, which resulted in Lincoln losing the election. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
Brown hoped that the local slave population would help him and his men capture prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. -
Democratic Party Splits into Northern and Southern Halves
The Democratic Party became so divided that they ran two candidates in the election of 1860: Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, while southern Democrats nominated John Breckinridge. This split the Democratic ticket in half, giving the Republicans, who nominated Abraham Lincoln, a huge advantage. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
The convention then adjourned to Charleston to draft an ordinance of secession. When the ordinance was adopted on December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. -
Abraham Lincoln Elected President
Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. -
Confederate States of America Founded
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. On February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy's first president. -
Firing on Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War. -
Battle of Antietam
Battle of Antietam, also called Battle of Sharpsburg, (17 September 1862), a decisive engagement in the American Civil War (1861–65) that halted the Confederate advance on Maryland for the purpose of gaining military supplies. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is 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. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. -
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln at the November 19, 1863, dedication of Soldier's National Cemetery, a cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle Of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. -
General U.S. Grant Assumed Command of Union Troops
Lieutenant General Grant Takes Command. In May 1864 the War between the States had entered its fourth year. -
Sherman’s March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. -
Lincoln Assassination
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. -
Lee Surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
The Battle of Appomattox Court House, fought on the morning of April 9, 1865, was one of the last battles of the American Civil War -
Johnson Announced Plans for Presidential Reconstruction
In 1865 President Andrew 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 the politics of the South. -
Ku Klux Klan formed
Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, during the Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The name was formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κύκλος, circle) with clan. The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". -
Period of “Redemption” after the Civil War
White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Republican Party after the Civil War and during the Reconstruction Era. -
Freedman’s Bureau Established
The Freedmen's Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. -
Congress Passed the 13th Amendment
On this day in 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in America.The amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” -
Andrew Johnson Became President
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. -
Civil Rights Act Passed over Johnson’s Veto
Congress overrides veto to enact civil rights bill, April 9, 1866. A Republican-dominated Congress enacted a landmark Civil Rights Act on this day in 1866, overriding a veto by President Andrew Johnson. The law's chief thrust was to offer protection to slaves freed in the aftermath of the Civil War -
Arrival of Scalawags and Carpetbaggers in the South
The term “carpetbaggers” refers to 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. Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. -
First Congressional Reconstruction Act passed
Reconstruction Acts, U.S. legislation enacted in 1867–68 that outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65). The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress. -
14th Amendment Ratified
On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was 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
On February 24, 1868 three days after Johnson's dismissal of Stanton, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 (with 17 members not voting) in favor of a resolution to impeach the President for high crimes and misdemeanors. ... One week later, the House adopted eleven articles of impeachment against the President. -
U.S. Grant Elected President
The United States presidential election of 1868 was the 21st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1868. In the first election of the Reconstruction Era, Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour. -
15th Amendment Ratified
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. -
Creation of the Radical Republicans
The leading Radicals in Congress were Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Charles Sumner in the Senate. Grant was elected as a Republican in 1868 and after the election he generally sided with the Radicals on Reconstruction policies and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law. -
Slaughterhouse Cases (Supreme Court)
The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), was the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment which had recently been enacted. ... In effect, the amendment was interpreted to convey limited protection pertinent to a small minority of rights. -
U.S. v. Cruikshank
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, was an important United States Supreme Court decision in United States constitutional law, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.
