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Leadership: Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves. -
Conflict: The Fugitive Slave Act
Passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, The Fugitive Slave Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. -
Leadership: The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It 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´. -
Crisis: Dred Scott Case
The Dred Scott case was a decision by the US Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It stated that that African Americans whose ancestors were imported and sold as slaves could not be a US citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court and that the government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. -
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Conflict: Harper's Ferry Raid
Led by John Brown, the armed raid on Harper's Ferry was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown was captured during the raid and later convicted of treason and hanged, but the raid inflamed white Southern fears of slave rebellions and increased the mounting tension between Northern and Southern states before the American Civil War. -
Crisis: The Election of 1860
In the Election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was representative of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery. And in the months following Lincoln’s election, seven Southern states seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War. -
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War: Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of U.S. Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, by the Confederates, and the return gunfire and surrender by the U.S. Army that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the US Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. -
War: First Battle of Bull Run (AKA Manassas)
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as Battle of First Manassas, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The Union's forces were slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops in their first battle. It was a Confederate victory, followed by a disorganized retreat of the Union forces. -
Crisis: Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” 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. -
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War: Battle of Vicksburg
In May and June of 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s armies converged on Vicksburg, investing the city and entrapping a Confederate army under Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the Confederacy was effectively split in half. -
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War: The Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg is considered the most important engagement of the Civil War. General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. The advancing Confederates clashed with the Union’s Army of the Potomacat the crossroads town of Gettysburg. The Confederates attacked the Federals on both left and right. On July 3, Lee ordered an attack on the enemy’s center at Cemetery Ridge. Lee was forced to withdraw his battered army on July 4. -
Crisis: The Election of 1864
In the election of 1864, Republican President Abraham Lincoln ran for re-election against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, who tried to portray himself to the voters as the "peace candidate" who wanted to bring the American Civil War to a speedy end. Lincoln was re-elected president by a landslide in the Electoral College. -
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Conflict: The Black Codes
The Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of Southern whites trying to suppress the new freedom of emancipated African American slaves, the freedmen. -
War: Battle of Appomattox Court House
The Battle of Appomattox Court House was one of the last battles of the American Civil War. It was the final engagement of Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Lee, having abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, after the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, retreated west, hoping to join his army with the Confederate forces in NC. -
Leadership: The 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. -
Leadership: The 14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
Leadership: 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. -
Crisis: The Whiskey Ring
The Whiskey Ring was a scandal, exposed in 1875, involving diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. It began in St. Louis but was also organized in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Peoria. A group of politicians were able to siphon off millions of dollars in federal taxes on liquor, using an extensive network of bribes involving distillers, rectifiers, gaugers, storekeepers, and internal revenue agents. -
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Conflict: Jim Crow Laws
These laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. -
Conflict: Plessy v. Ferguson
This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law.