Abolitionism
This abolitionist believed that violence was the only way to end slavery and staged an insurrection in Harper's Ferry, WV.
John Brown
This is the name given to the deal made by Congress that Missouri will enter the Union as slave state, Maine as a free state, and that slavery will not be allowed to exist north of the 36'30' parallel.
Missouri Compromise
This document, issued by Abraham Lincoln, declared all enslaved people in Confederate territory would become free once Union forces reached them.
Emancipation Proclamation
This man was the Confederacy's primary military commander and remains the most famous figure from the Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee
This abolitionist is famous for his "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July speech" amongst many other accomplishments.
Frederick Douglass
These abolitionists believed that slavery should end gradually over time.
Gradualists
A preview of the Civil War took place in Kansas after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This violent event is known as...
Bleeding Kansas
Abraham Lincoln declared that slavery went against America's founding ideals in this famous speech.
Gettysburg Address
Lincoln waited until after this major victory before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. This battle was also the single bloodiest day in American history.
Battle of Antietam
This man assassinated Abraham Lincoln only five days after the end of the Civil War.
John Wilkes Booth
This abolitionist differed from many of his peers in that he believed that women and African Americans should play a leading role in the movement.
William Lloyd Garrison
In this disastrous Supreme Court ruling, the court determined that African Americans had no civil rights, could never be citizens, and that the federal government could not limit slavery in any way.
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
This federal holiday celebrates the ending of slavery in the United States.
Juneteenth
This nickname is given to the Union's war strategy. It involved blockading Southern ports and capturing control of the Mississippi River.
Anaconda Plan
This man led the nation's bloodiest and most sustained slave revolt in Virginia in the 1830s.
Nat Turner
This is the belief, common amongst white abolitionists, that African Americans should be sent to live abroad after emancipation.
Colonizationism
This South Carolina senator nearly killed his colleague Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate for giving an anti-slavery speech. He was celebrated by most of his fellow Southerners.
Preston Brooks
Enslaved people in these states had to wait until after the war was over to become free. Lincoln's earlier policies did not free people in these states.
Border States
The Civil War officially began after Confederate forces attacked this Union stronghold in South Carolina.
Fort Sumter
This violent event during the Civil War occurred when racist Northerners rioted because they were angry about being drafted into the Union Army.
New York City Draft Riots
This is the belief that the United States government was fundamentally pro-slavery in its founding, and thus a new government is needed in order to finally abolish slavery.
Disunionism
This law, which was part of the Compromise of 1850, helped to make abolitionism a more mainstream sentiment in the North.
Fugitive Slave Law
This name is given to enslaved people who escaped from the Confederacy into Union lines and assisted with the Northern war effort.
Contrabands
This Union general infamously burned much of Georgia at the end of the war in his demoralizing "March to the Sea."
William T. Sherman
Millions of enslaved people were separated from their families and sold from the Upper South to the Deep South in the decades leading up to the Civil War. This forced movement was known as the...
Second Middle Passage