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The American Civil War started on April 12, 1861. It was caused by the disagreement between the Northern and Southern states of America- Northern states were on the side of abolishing slavery while Southern states wanted to keep owning slaves. The southern states formed their own "country," the confederacy/the confederate states of America. [1]

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On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced that all slaves would be freed. However, they were only freed after the civil war ended and the 13th amendment was added[2] on December 18, 1865.  Over 100,000 enslaved Americans were now free people. But there were still a lot of things they had to fight for. [3]

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Prelude to war

The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) in 1860-61 and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional friction over slavery. Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture-mostly smaller farms that relied on free labour-remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover, Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines, and books, along with the telegraph.

By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and that relied on slaves as the main labour force. Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners invested their money in slaves-even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860, this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South's defining crop, had skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves-who were, after all, property-rose commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners.

The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the Northwest Ordinance of 1784. When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the "peculiar institution," as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labour, came to believe, in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated. White Southerners feared that limiting the expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through compromise. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party, won the 1860 presidential election, seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the Confederate States of America.

In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops under P.G.T. Beauregard. Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy.

With war upon the land, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states, although he insisted that they did not legally constitute a sovereign country but were instead states in rebellion. He also directed the secretary of the treasury to advance $2 million to assist in the raising of troops, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country. The Confederate government had previously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months' service, and this figure was soon increased to 400,000.
Jennifer L. Weber

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American Civil War | History, Summary, Dates, Causes, Map, Timeline, Battles, Significance, & Facts

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American Civil War, four-year war (1861-65) fought between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America. It arose out of disputes over slavery and states' rights. When antislavery candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president (1860), the Southern states seceded.

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Brown v. Board of Education was a law case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation and racial discrimination in schools was unconstitutional. The vote was unanimous, 9 to 0, in favor of banning segregation in schools. They determined that "separate but equal" was inherently unequal and went against the 14th amendment. Many southern states opposed the ruling but it was fortunately not reversed to spare racists' feelings. [5]

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1955 - Rosa Parks Refuses to Give up her Seat

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1955 - Rosa Parks Refuses to Give up her Seat

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December 1st, 1955 was the day Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. At the time, black Americans were required to sit at/closer to the back of the bus than white folks. They also had to give up their seat if a white person asked. However, Rosa refused to get up and move to the back, fed up with the demeaning policies. She was arrested and placed in custody but bailed out the same day. Her bravery inspired boycotts against the bus system to protest the segregation and unfair treatment on public transportation. [6]

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" is one of- if not the- greatest and most famous speech of all time. On August 28, 1963, he stood in front of 250,000 people to give a speech. They had gathered at an event that protested racism, segregation, and encouraged the Civil Rights Act to be approved by congress. It's actually a little-known fact that King was nearly done with his speech before even mentioning the dream. But after a friend brought it up, he improvised the iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.[7]

"I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that…one day right there in Alabama, little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

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I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history.

Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. The one-day event both protested racial discrimination and encouraged the passage of civil rights legislation; at the time, the Civil Rights Act was being discussed in Congress. The march featured various speeches as well as musical performances before King, a celebrated orator, appeared as the final official speaker; A. Philip Randolph and Benjamin Mays ended the proceedings with a pledge and a benediction, respectively.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Early in his prepared speech, King referenced Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with "Five score years ago...." He then spoke about the Emancipation Proclamation, which "end[ed] the long night of their [slaves'] captivity." However, he continued by noting that African Americans were still "not free" and that they were "crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."

According to various observers, however, as King neared the end, the address was failing to achieve the resonance of his more noteworthy speeches. As activist John Lewis noted, King himself could "sense that he was falling short." Perhaps that compelled singer Mahalia Jackson to call out, imploring him to tell the crowd about "the dream." It was a theme he had used at earlier events but had been advised not to use in Washington, with one aide calling it "trite." At Jackson's urging, however, King abandoned his prepared text and launched into a discussion of his dreams, adopting "the stance of a Baptist preacher."

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream....I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that...one day right there in Alabama, little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

King's improvisations seemed to strike a chord with the crowd, many of whom called out words of encouragement. The speech built to its emotional conclusion, which was borrowed from a Black spiritual: "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." Largely based on King's extemporizations, the speech was widely considered the greatest of the 20th century, noted for its power and resonance. With its universal appeal, "I have a dream" became an enduring phrase both in the United States and elsewhere. In addition, many believed the speech helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

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I Have a Dream | Date, Quotations, & Facts

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I Have a Dream, the speech by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history.

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On July 2, 1964, president Truman signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This made it illegal to discriminate against people because of their race, skin color, religion, sex, or ethnicity. This made real progress because now it was actually punishable. [8]

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BLM, or Black Lives Matter, is a social movement and social justice group formed in 2013. It formed in protest to the murder of Trayvon Martin and other cases of police brutality. [10] They organize protests and marches against racism, police brutality, unjust shootings, arrests, and convictions. The movement saw a large spike in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd. [9]