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The Confederacy is founded when the deep South secedes, and the Civil War begins
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1861 - American Civil War broke out
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In 1862, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation opened the door for African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. Although many had wanted to join the war effort earlier, they were prohibited from enlisting by a federal law dating back to 1792.
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1863 - Abraham Lincoln, the President of America, issued Emancipation Proclamation. This declaration liberated the slaves. President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
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The Olustee. In the disastrous affair of Olustee, Florida, February 20th, 1864, the redeeming feature appears to have been the conspicuous gallantry of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. That regiment was hurried into action at the very crisis of affairs. It checked the onward sweep of a victorious enemy. and covered the retreat towards Jacksonville in a thoroughly creditable manner, as I am told, under the immediate direction of Colonel Edward N. Hallowell. In this battle the Eighth U.S. Colored
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Freedmen's Bureau was established to protect the rights of the newly-freed Blacks
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The assassination was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause.
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Southern states of America passed the Black Codes, restricting the civil rights to the freed black slaves. The Black codes in the United States were any of numerous laws enacted in the states of the former Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866; the laws were designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and were thus intended to assure continuance of white supremacy.
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Formed in Tennesse
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Slavery in the United States is effectively ended when 250,000 slaves in Texas finally receive the news that the Civil War had ended two months earlier US.
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Ratified-Constitution--prohibing slavery
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Reconstruction Acts were passed to guarantee civil rights to the freed slaves
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1868, African-Americans were granted the US citizenship.Constitution is ratified, defining citizenship. Individuals born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, including those born as slaves. This nullifies the Dred Scott Case (1857), which had ruled that blacks were not citizens.
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Howard University's law school becomes the country's first black law school
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Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote.
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Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected the country's first African-American senator. During Reconstruction, sixteen blacks served in Congress and about 600 served in states legislatures.
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Reconstruction ends in the South. Federal attempts to provide some basic civil rights for African Americans quickly erode.
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Thousands of African-Americans migrate to Kansas. This is known as The Black Exodus
