Beginning with isolated, individual critics of slavery, antislavery rhetoric gained momentum in the mid-eighteenth…
...West Virginia, each very different in terms of their politics, economics and the extent to which slavery…
...century) as a mountainous region with an overwhelmingly white population whose relative lack of ties…
For a century after emancipation, historians of U.S. slavery relied almost exclusively on sources written…
...object of antebellum national political discussion, tariffs occupied a distant secondary place behind…
...states to the original thirteen. With equal representation of each state in the Senate, the issue…
The South's Peculiar Institution
...the west in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) the Five Tribes experienced the war differently. There…
...popular sovereignty to decide whether to admit Kansas as a free or slave state. Abolitionist and proslavery…
...in fame, they personified the regions that quarreled over expansion, finance, foreign policy, and…
The personal liberty laws of the northern “free” states, enacted between 1780 and 1859, protected African-Americans…
The Wilmot Proviso, first proposed by Democratic congressman David Wilmot in 1846, prohibited slavery…
...lines cities shaped social and political change based on race, gender and class. As refugees from…
...was particularly attractive to primarily upper-class expats as a place where they could perpetuate…
Without the presence of slavery, disunion and war would not have taken place. But did slavery's presence…
...War. Events in Missouri prior to 1861 triggered the national debate over the westward expansion of…
...aid societies also made common cause with abolitionist organizations pushing for the abolition of…
...most significant effect of widespread fortifications the unforeseen impact it would have on American…
...temporary residents, but their struggles and sacrifices helped to win the war, preserve the Union,…
...unclear if Kentucky would remain with the Union or join the fledgling Confederacy. As a divided, proslavery…
Born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls seized his and his family’s freedom…
...leaders in the antebellum period and they sought to recreate the pre-war caste system, albeit without…
...ordinance of secession, the result of tensions beginning in 1787 with how the Constitution handled…
...the war had evolved to one that recognized it not as the culmination of the nation’s division over…
...obtained in the Mexican American War of 1848 caused further sectional strife over the expansion of…
...leading supplier of the materials of physical reconstruction. And with the destruction of the system…
...sovereignty was one of the ideas that featured in the antebellum political battles over the extension…
The Missouri Compromise settled the question of slavery in that state but was a harbinger of issues arising…
The debate over slavery and the struggle in the Kansas Territory in the late 1850s.
...Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in January and ratified in December of 1865…
It is difficult to imagine that slavery would have ceased to exist in the United States as quickly as…
...would join together to fight the Emperor of Mexico. Reunion would follow, the South would abandon…
The voters in 1860 decisively chose to contain slavery, saying that the institution should not expand…
...“popular sovereignty”; Douglas claimed to be indifferent to whether a territory adopted or rejected…
The 1857 Supreme Court ruling on a number of issues relating to slavery.
...Freedom | Life and Times of Frederick Douglas | Slave Narratives | North Star | New National Era |…
...sectional passions. It was applauded in the South where increasing hostility of northerners towards…
...population of eastern Tennessee. Of the two goals the most important was to keep Kentucky, a state…
...rejected by the Senate were proscribed. The constitution included specific provisions to protect slavery…
