How the Emancipation Proclamation Worked

Here’s a question for your next trivia game: How many slaves did the Emancipation Proclamation free? Answer: Zero.

How the Underground Railroad Worked

Harriet Tubman was known as "the Moses of her people" for her work on the Underground Railroad. How much do we really know about this secret system?

Abolitionists

Abolitionist, in United States history, a person who urged the immediate freeing of the slaves regardless of the Constitution, laws, or property rights.

Amistad Mutiny

Amistad Mutiny (also known as Amistad Case). In 1839 off the coast of Cuba, Africans held as slaves aboard the ship Amistad were led by a fellow captive named Cinqué in revolt against their Spanish captors.

Crispus Attucks

Attucks, Crispus (1723?–1770), an American killed in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770.

Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation, in the American Civil War, an order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in states that were "in rebellion" against the United States.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, a federal law that stirred bitter controversy over slavery.

Lecompton Constitution

Lecompton Constitution, a proposed constitution under which the Territory of Kansas would have entered the Union as a slave state.

Levi Coffin

Coffin, Levi (1789-1877), a United States abolitionist. Coffin, a devout Quaker, was one of the best-known figures in the anti-slavery movement.

Missouri Compromise

Missouri Compromise, an 1820 agreement that settled the slavery question for about 30 years.

Nat Turner

Turner, Nat (1800–1831), the leader of a bloody slave uprising that took place in Virginia in 1831.

Sectionalism and Slavery

Arguments over the issue of slavery developed in Congress after Missouri, part of the Louisiana Purchase area, applied in 1818 for admission as a state.

Slavery

Slavery, a system under which an individual is held as the property of another to be used or disposed of at the will of the owner, or master.

Underground Railroad Information

Underground Railroad, a name applied to an informal network that aided runaway slaves from the South before the Civil War.

Wilmot Proviso

Wilmot Proviso, a proposed restriction on the extension of slavery in territory obtained by the United States through the Mexican War.