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A novel, first published serially, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; it paints a grim picture of life under slavery. The title character is a pious, passive slave, who is eventually beaten to death by the overseer Simon Legree.
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anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.
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The Kansas Nebraska Act 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.
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Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 put a match to the tinderbox of sectional conflict over the future of slavery and helped shape the subsequent presidential election.
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Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. ... One of Brown's sons was killed in the fighting.
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In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown was executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection.
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Elected President. Abraham Lincoln. Republican. The United States Presidential Election of 1860 was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States.
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The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed. Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union.
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This event 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.
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The war was fought in the United States between northern (Union) and southern (Confederate) states from 1861 to 1865, in which the Confederacy sought to establish itself as a separate nation. The Civil War is also known as the War for Southern Independence and as the War between the States.
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In the Confederate Capital City of Montgomery, Alabama, the decision was made to name the City of Richmond, Virginia as the new Capital of the Confederacy.
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When Congress was called into special session, President Lincoln issued a message to both houses defending his various actions, including the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that it was both necessary and constitutional for him to have suspended it without Congress.
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The first battle of the American Civil War, fought in Virginia near Washington, D.C. The surprising victory of the Confederate army humiliated the North and forced it to prepare for a long war. A year later the Confederacy won another victory near the same place.
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Jefferson Davis, who had been elected President and Alexander H. Stephens, who had been elected Vice President, under the Provisional Confederate States Constitution, were elected to six-year terms as the first permanent President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
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Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack, also called Battle of Hampton Roads, , in the American Civil War, naval engagement at Hampton Roads, Virginia, a harbor at the mouth of the James River, notable as history's first duel between ironclad warships and the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.
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The Battle of Shiloh was a battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought in southwestern Tennessee.The Battle of Shiloh became one of the bloodiest engagements of the war, and the level of violence shocked North and South alike.
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Robert E. Lee was named commander of the Northern Virginia Army in 1862. He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865.
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This event was a decisive engagement in the American Civil War (1861–65) that halted the Confederate advance on Maryland for the purpose of gaining military supplies.
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The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General Ambrose Burnside, as part of the American Civil War.
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The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued on by President Lincoln freeing slaves in all portions of the United States not then under Union control (that is, within the Confederacy).
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The Battle of Chancellorsville resulted in a Confederate victory that stopped an attempted flanking movement by Maj. Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker's Army of the Potomac against the left of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
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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.
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The Confederacy is torn in two when General John C. Pemberton surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
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Known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War.
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The Gettysburg Address was a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln was speaking at the dedication of a soldiers' cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.
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The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate.
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The Battle of Atlanta was fought just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia. Union forces commanded by William T. Sherman, wanting to neutralize the important rail and supply hub, defeated Confederate forces defending the city under John B. Hood.
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In the midst of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan. Lincoln's re-election ensured that he would preside over the successful conclusion of the Civil War.
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Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia's civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause.
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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.
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Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address was delivered during the final days of the Civil War and only a month before he was assassinated.
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The Confederate government fled the city with the army right behind. Now, on the morning of April 3, blue-coated troops entered the capital. Richmond was the holy grail of the Union war effort, the object of four years of campaigning.
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Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War.
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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.
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Southern sympathizer who killed Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865 as the president and Mrs. Lincoln sat watching a production of the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Wilkes was tracked down and killed a few days later.