The Civil War Era
Slavery, union and freedom in the United States, 1820s to 1877
For forty years, Americans argued over whether slavery would spread into the West. In 1861 the argument became a war. About 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers died (estimates vary), and about four million enslaved people became free. Then came Reconstruction, when the nation tried to rebuild the Union and decide what freedom and citizenship would mean for Black Americans, until it gave up the effort in 1877.
This section of the Jugami School follows that story using real documents. Start with the Causes unit; more units are on the way.
Start Here
Causes of the Civil War
Why compromise over slavery kept failing, from the Missouri Compromise to Fort Sumter. The unit includes primary sources and a quiz.
Open the unit ›More Units
These units are still being written. They will be linked here when they are ready.
- New
Key Battles and Turning Points
From Fort Sumter to Appomattox: eight battles on a clickable map, with Antietam, Gettysburg and Vicksburg explained, primary sources and a quiz.
- Coming soon
Leaders
The people who led armies, governments and movements, North and South.
- Coming soon
Slavery and Emancipation
How enslaved people resisted, escaped and helped end slavery, and how emancipation came.
- Coming soon
Reconstruction
Rebuilding the Union, new rights for freedpeople, and the violent backlash that ended it.
The Era at a Glance
A few landmark dates. The Causes unit covers the years up to 1861 in much more detail.
- 1820 The Missouri Compromise admits Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and draws the 36°30′ line.
- 1831 Nat Turner leads a rebellion of enslaved people in Virginia; the same year William Lloyd Garrison starts The Liberator.
- 1850 The Compromise of 1850 includes a harsh new Fugitive Slave Act.
- 1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act lets settlers in Kansas and Nebraska vote on slavery, ending the Missouri Compromise line, and violence breaks out in Kansas.
- 1857 In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court rules that Black Americans, free or enslaved, cannot be citizens.
- 1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected president. South Carolina secedes in December.
- 1861 Confederate guns fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, and the war begins.
- 1863 The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect on January 1. In July, Union armies win at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
- 1865 Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox on April 9. Lincoln is shot on April 14 and dies the next morning. The 13th Amendment, ratified in December, abolishes slavery.
- 1868 The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship and equal protection of the laws.
- 1870 The 15th Amendment bars denying the vote because of race.
- 1877 The last federal troops are withdrawn from Southern statehouses, and Reconstruction ends.