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Period: to
Civil War Era
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Charles Sumner
An American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator. Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The new Republican Party, which was created in opposition to the act, aimed to stop the expansion of slavery and soon emerged as the dominant political party in the North, electing its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860. -
Clara Barton
She was a pioneer American teacher, patent clerk, nurse, and humanitarian. One of her greatest accomplishments was founding the American Red Cross. This organization helps victims of war and disasters. -
southern Secession
The one serious secession movement was defeated in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865. In 1860 and 1861, eleven of the fifteen southern states declared their secession from the United States and joined together as the Confederate States of America. That attempt at secession collapsed in 1865 after losing a war with the northern states -
Jerrerson Davis
An American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, from 1861 to 1865. -
Conscription (Civil War)
Also known as The Draft, men between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to register for the Military. The United States first employed national conscription during the American Civil War. -
Antietam
Battle Antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, in Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek. -
Emancipation Proclamation
It proclaimed all slaves in Confederate territory to be forever free; that is, it ordered the Army to treat as free men the slaves in ten states that were still in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both in the Southern and Northern States. -
Stonewall Jackson
Confederate general during the American Civil War, and one of the best-known Confederate commanders after General Robert E. Lee. -
Radical Republicans
The Radical Republicans were a loose faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They called themselves "radicals" and were opposed during the war by moderates and conservative factions led by Abraham Lincoln and after the war by self-described "conservatives" (in the South) and "Liberals" (in the North). -
Appomattox Court House
This building, erected in 1892 when the county seat was moved to this location, should not be mistaken for the original, built in 1846 and destroyed by fire in 1892. Three miles northeast is old Appomattox Court House and the McLean House where Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, thus ending the War between the States. -
Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that had held that black people could not be citizens of the United States. -
Ulysses S. Grant
18th President of the United States (1869–1877) following his highly successful role as a war general in the second half of the Civil War. Under Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military; having effectively ended the war and secession with the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox.
