Preserving Revolutionary & Civil War History
Preserving Revolutionary & Civil War History
Author: Abraham Lincoln Date:1858 Annotation: The critical issues dividing the nation–slavery versus free labor, popular sovereignty, and the legal and political status of African Americans–were brought into sharp focus during the 1858 campaign for U.S. Senator from Illinois. The…
Author: Roger B. Taney Date:1857 Annotation: In March 1857, the Supreme Court answered a question that Congress had evaded for decades: whether Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. The case originated in 1846, when a…
Author: Charles Sumner Date:1856 Annotation: This speech was delivered by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, on May 19-20, 1856, in the United States Senate. A few days later, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a cousin of Sen. Andrew Butler,…
Date:1856 Annotation: Republican Party Platform of 1856. Document: Republican Party Platform of 1856 This Convention of Delegates, assembled in pursuance of a call addressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differences or divisions, who are opposed…
Annotation: In 1854, a piece of legislation was introduced in Congress that shattered all illusions of sectional peace. The Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the Whig Party, divided the Democratic Party, and created the Republican Party. Ironically, the author of this legislation was…
Author: John M. Clayton and Henry Lytton Bulwer Date:1850 Annotation: The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was an agreement that stated that both the United States and the United Kingdom were not to colonize or control any Central American republic. The purpose of…
Author: Benjamin Drew Date:1850 Annotation: The testimony and personal accounts of fugitive slaves’ journeys to freedom written by Benjamin Drew, a Boston abolitionist. Document: 1. Introduction: Benjamin Drew, a Boston abolitionist acting in cooperation with officers of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society,…
Date:1848 Annotation: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was the peace treaty that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Document: ART. I. THERE shall be firm and universal peace between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, and between their respective countries,…
Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Date:1848 Annotation: Seneca Falls, New York, is the birthplace of the women’s rights movement in the United States. On July 19, 1848, the first convention dedicated to equal treatment of women opened in this fast-growing village…
Date:1846 Annotation: This treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country, which had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818. Document: ART. I.…
Author: James K. Polk Date:1846 Annotation: Among President James K. Polk’s plans to expand the nation’s territory was the attempted purchase of New Mexico and California from Mexico in 1846. When the sale failed, Polk sent U.S. troops to Texas…
Date:1842 Annotation: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty settled several matters between the United States and Great Britain and was signed August 9, 1842. The treaty settled the Northeast Boundary Dispute between the U.S. and Great Britain and the shared use of the Great…