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The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, 1776. By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The Declaration summarized the colonists' motivations for seeking independence. -
Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was the legislation that provided for the admission to the United States of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the United States Senate. -
The Liberator
The Liberator was an American abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves. It also promoted women’s rights. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the American intervention in Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. -
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 Law
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas is the term used to describe the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. It started in 1854 and ended in 1861. -
Kansad-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. -
Dred Scott Case
Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States -
The House Divided Speech
The House Divided Speech was an address given by Abraham Lincoln, later President of the United States, on June 16, 1858 at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's US senator. -
Illinois senatorial campaign in 1858
The Lincoln–Douglas debates (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
South Carolina secedes
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. James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it. -
Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth President of the United States. -
Fort Sumter
Early in the morning of April 12, 1861, Confederate guns around the harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. At 2:30 pm on April 13th, Major Robert Anderson, garrison commander, surrendered the fort and was evacuated the next day. The Union would not recapture Fort Sumter for nearly four years. -
First Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas, was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 25 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. -
Fort Donelson
Battle of Fort Donelson was fought from February 12-16, 1862, in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. The Union capture of the Confederate fort near the Tennessee-Kentucky border opened the Cumberland River, an important avenue for the invasion of the South. -
Monitor vs. Merrimack
The Battle of Hampton Roads, often referred to as either the Battle of the Monitor and Merrimack or the Battle of Ironclads, was the most noted and arguably most important naval battle of the American Civil War from the standpoint of the development of navies. The battle lasted from March 8, 1862 to March 9, 1862 -
Shiloh
The Battle of Shiloh was a battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War fought April 6-7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. Battle of Shiloh is the seventh-costliest land battle of the American Civil War -
Harper's Ferry
The Battle of Harpers Ferry was fought September 12–15, 1862, as part of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. -
Antietam
The Battle of Antietam, also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate. -
Emancipation Proclamation
On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863. ... The Proclamation made freeing the slaves an explicit goal of the Union war effort. -
Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. The Battle took place from May 18 to July 4, 1863 -
Gettysburg
The battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1-3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. -
Fort Wagner
The Second Battle of Fort Wagner, also known as the Second Assault on Morris Island or the Battle of Fort Wagner, Morris Island, was fought on July 18, 1863, during the American Civil War, Union Army troops commanded by Brig. -
The Gettysburg Adress
The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is one of the best-known speeches in American history -
Shenandoah
The Valley Campaigns of 1864 were American Civil War operations and battles that took place in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from May to October 1864. While some military historians divide this period into three separate campaigns, they interacted in several ways. -
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's Second Inaugural Adress
Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Lincoln taking the oath at his second inauguration, March 4, 1865. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address was delivered on March 4, 1865, during the final days of the Civil War and only a month before he was assassinated. -
Appomattox
Battle of Appomattox Court House, (9 April 1865), one of the final battles of the American Civil War. It was here in Virginia, on the afternoon of 9 April, that Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, setting the stage for the end of the four-year civil war. -
Thirteen Amendment
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 on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. -
Fourteen Amendment
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. -
Fifteen Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.