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Election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of United States. He was the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote, but handily defeated the three other candidates. Seven states already seceded because of Lincolns victory for president. -
Civil War
This war was fought in the United States. It was between the North and the South. The North won the war. Fort Sumter triggered the war. The war started started on April 12th, 1861 and it ended on May 9th, 1865. -
Secession of Southern States
Southerners thought the government was becoming too strong. They did not think the government had the right to tell them how to live. Southerners felt if they stayed in the United States, the North would control them. South Carolina was the first state to leave the Union. -
Emancipation Proclimation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. The nation approached their 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". -
Sharecropping
With the southern economy in disarray after the abolition of slavery and the devastation of the Civil War, conflict arose between many white landowners attempting to reestablish a labor force and freed blacks seeking economic independence and autonomy. -
Freedmen's Bureau
The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). Some 4 million slaves gained their freedom as a result of the Union victory in the war. -
Radical Reconstruction
After northern voters rejected Johnson's policies in the congressional elections in late 1866, Republicans in Congress took firm hold of Reconstruction in the South. -
Assassination of Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and confederate sympathizer, fatally shot president Lincoln at a play at Ford's theater in Washington D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army. -
Reconstruction
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. -
13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." -
1st African American elected to Congress during Reconstruction
During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any black senators. On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the first black member of the Senate, while Blanche Bruce, also of Mississippi, seated in 1875, was the second. Revels was the first black member of the Congress overall. -
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. -
15th amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that 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." -
Civil Rights act of 1875
was a federal law enacted by Congress that prohibited discrimination in public accommodations. The Act guaranteed everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, same treatment in public accommodations.