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Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. -
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia -
The Election of 1860 demonstrated the divisions within the United States just before the Civil War. The election was unusual because four strong candidates competed for the presidency. Political parties of the day were in flux. -
By February 1861, seven Southern states had seceded. On February 4 of that year, representatives from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana met in Montgomery, Alabama, with representatives from Texas arriving later, to form the Confederate States of America -
On April 12, 1861, forces from the Confederate States of America attacked the United States military garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Less than two days later, the fort surrendered. No one was killed. -
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Less than 34 hours later, Union forces surrendered. -
Its outcome sent northerners who had expected a quick, decisive victory reeling, and gave rejoicing southerners a false hope that they themselves could pull off a swift victory. -
On November 6, 1861, Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress earlier in the year. -
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." -
The Union's eventual victory in the Battle of Gettysburg would give the North a major morale boost and put a definitive end to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's bold plan to invade the North. -
The purpose of Sherman's March to the Sea was to frighten Georgia's civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. -
Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The 13th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union, and should have easily passed in Congress. -
In Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. -
As the war drew to a close with the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865, and Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, there were Southern sympathizers who believed that the Confederacy could be restored. John Wilkes Booth held that belief, and it was the motive behind his plot to murder President Abraham Lincoln. -
The Fourteenth Amendment is an amendment to the United States Constitution that was adopted in 1868. It granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and enslaved people who had been emancipated after the American Civil War. -
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.