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Election of Abraham Lincoln
In 1860 Lincoln won the party's presidential nomination. -
Secession of Southern States
South Carolina was the first state to leave the union and form a new nation called the Confederate States Of America -
Civil War
General Pierre Beauregard opened fire with 50 cannons on Fort Sumter. -
Emancipation Proclamation
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." -
13th Amendment
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." -
Freedman's Bureau
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). -
Assassination of Lincoln
On April 14 1865 John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. -
Reconstruction
The period following the Civil War of rebuilding the United States. -
Radical Reconstruction
Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized. -
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all Americans and is cited in more litigation than any other amendment. -
Sharecropping
Instead of receiving wages for working an owner’s land–and having to submit to supervision and discipline–most freedmen preferred to rent land for a fixed payment rather than receive wages. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment 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." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. -
1st African American elected to Congress during Reconstruction
Blanche K. Bruce, elected to the Senate in 1875 from Mississippi, had lived a privileged life as a slave and also received some education. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was an act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights.
