# data[].attributes.body
Abraham Lincoln is the 16th US President, and is well-known for his strong stance against the practice of slavery, and especially for the Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation.

# data[].attributes.body
The Bill of Rights contains the first 10 amendments to the Constitution; it created more rights several years after the publication of the Constitution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Español Accordion [accordion classes="" id="59774" expand_first="true"][/accordion] Back to Main Page How Did it Happen?

# data[].attributes.body
Timelines are graphic representations of historical events, the order in which they took place, and perhaps even how some events led to others.

# data[].attributes.body
The credibility of a source is determined by its relevancy, accuracy, and author's credentials; source credibility is crucial when searching for factual information.

# data[].attributes.body
Benjamin Franklin was instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Independence that sparked the American Revolution, as well as writing the Treaty of Paris which brought the war to an end.

# data[].attributes.body
The Constitution is a document which outlines the most basic laws of the United States, as well as how the government is structured.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Constitution for Kids | What It Is and Why It Matters

# data[].attributes.body
Slavery was the practice of humans (almost always African Americans) being purchased and owned, forced to work for little or no monetary gain, and having no right to leave the situation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When Did Slavery Start in America?

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

After the American Revolution, many colonists-particularly in the North, where slavery was relatively unimportant to the agricultural economy-began to link the oppression of enslaved Africans to their own oppression by the British, and to call for slavery's abolition.

Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

But after the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, when it valued each enslaved individual as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress. The Constitution's drafters also guaranteed the right to repossess any "person held to service or labor" (an obvious euphemism for slavery).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.

By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War. Though the Union victory freed the nation's four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond.

Cotton Gin

In the late 18th century, with the land used to grow tobacco nearly exhausted, the South faced an economic crisis, and the continued growth of slavery in America seemed in doubt.

Around the same time, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand.

But in 1793, a young Yankee schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South transitioned from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region's dependence on enslaved labor.

Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region's businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, most of the northern states abolished slavery or started the process to abolish slavery, but the institution of slavery remained vital to the South.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

Living Conditions of Enslaved People

Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many masters owned fewer than 50 enslaved people.

Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted.

Many masters raped enslaved women, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their masters.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families. Most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.

Slave Rebellions

Rebellions among enslaved people did occur-notably, ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822-but few were successful.

The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner's group, which eventually numbered around 75 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.

Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner's rebellion as evidence that Black people were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them. And fears of similar insurrections led many southern states to further strengthen their slave codes in order to limit the education, movement and assembly of enslaved people.

Abolitionist Movement

In the North, the increased repression of southern Black people only fanned the flames of the growing abolitionist movement.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by free Black people such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious "free-labor" argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Free Black people and other antislavery northerners had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad, gained real momentum in the 1830s.

Conductors like Harriet Tubmanguided escapees on their journey North, and " stationmasters" included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Althoughestimates vary widely, it may have helped anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 enslaved people reach freedom.

The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North. It also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen's determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

Missouri Compromise

America's explosive growth-and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century-would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion.

In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government's right to restrict slavery over Missouri's application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri's southern border were to be free soil.

Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was only temporarily able to help quell the forces of sectionalism.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War.

Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out-with considerable bloodshed-in the new state of Kansas.

Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.

John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.

John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia-in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown's sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal-resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brown's hanging.

The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.

Civil War

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

Though Lincoln's anti-slavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation.

Abolition became a goal only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many people who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South.

When Did Slavery End?

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that "slaves within any State, or designated part of a State...in rebellion,...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn't officially end all slavery in America-that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War's end in 1865-some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

The Legacy of Slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples' status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the "equal protection" of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment, but these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping.

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy-including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)-had triumphed in the South by 1877.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.

America's First Memorial to its 4,400 Lynching Victims

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Slavery in America was the legal institution of enslaving human beings, mainly Africans and African Americans. Slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 and became the main cause behind the country's bloody Civil War. Slavery officially ended in America with the passage of the 13th Amendment following the Civil War's end in 1865.

# data[].attributes.body
The Emancipation Proclamation, delivered by Abraham Lincoln in January of 1863, promised to free all slaves in states that had seceded from the union, in the event that the union won the Civil War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

# data[].attributes.body
One major impact of WWII in America is the creation of jobs to fuel the war, leading many women and minorities to work in factories that produced war materials.

# data[].attributes.body
Segregation is the practice of separating African Americans from whites in most public places in the southern states; this practice followed the ending of slavery in America and continued well into the 1960s.

# data[].attributes.body
Urbanization is the shift from rural to urban living or an urban area getting larger. This took place during the Industrial Revolution with the promise of factory work, jobs that paid. As more and more people were able to find work, many people flooded to these cities, causing overcrowding and job scarcity. This created poor families, cramped and dirty living conditions and competing over low paying jobs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As we all know, the world has developed a lot since the ages of industrialization in the 20 th century. Industrialization seasons were marked by a change in the social and economic phenomena. The transformation involved a paradigm shift from an agricultural society to an industrial society. While industrialization and modernization are an entity that seems intertwined, this article will look into the major differences that distinguish the two terminologies.

Definition of Terms

The term urbanization can be defined in different ways to broaden the meaning thereof. It could refer to the increase in the number of people who dwell in urban areas. It can as well be defined as the process by which major towns and trading centers are formed to become larger, due to people moving into these towns for work and living (1). Urbanization is predominantly a cause of the physical growth of a town or any urban area. Aspects that contribute to urbanization are mainly: industrialization, modernization, and rationalization that results from sociological processes. It is a historical transformation on a global scale. It majorly involves the replacement of old cultural ways to a dominating urban culture.

Industrialization, on the other hand, is a change in the social and economic activities of a people, which involves a shift to manufacturing, innovation and the replacement of farming and other minor economic activities (2). The process of industrialization begun in the 1760s in Britain. During this period, there was marked growth in the population and the income that people gained. Industrialization has featured a lot in the social and economic aspects to people. One of the major phenomena that transpired due to industrialization was urbanization.
Key Differences between Urbanization and Industrialization
Industrialization and urbanization relate to each other. Industrialization is the pivot that leveled urbanization. Though the two terms do not refer to one thing, the process of separating the two terms is complex.

Process

The process of industrialization is different from the process of urbanization. Both of them are inspired by different things. Industrialization is the result of an expansion in the manufacturing process of a company. Industrialization was a shift in the manufacturing process that was influenced by a transformation in the technology and innovation spheres (3). The discovery of new and efficient ways of effecting the production of manufactured commodities led to industrialization. Inventions paved the way for manufacturers and soon, the small cottages and yarn spinning factories were changed into mega facilities that combined human labor and mechanized functions. The transformation is what we refer to as industrialization.

On the other hand, the better-mechanized manufacturing plants realized there was a need to increase their labor force. The sharp rise in manufacturing could not be sustained by the few workers who used to run the old manufacturing cottages. More people were needed to work in the manufacturing industries. The industries promised a better pay for the workers (3). People living in peasant farms in the rural areas migrated to the towns where the manufacturing industries were situated. These people realized that there were new needs that they had to meet. The food was not readily available from the farm and there was no place to call home. This evidenced the mushrooming of lodges, taverns, brothels, and hotels. People adopted new lifestyles and trade was enhanced, thus leading to urbanization.

Importance

The importance of these two phenomena also shaped the reason for their existence. The purpose that industrialization served was different from the purpose that urbanization served. Industrialization at the time was the faith of a country. Industrialization was a show of superiority and grandeur. The more a country was industrialized the richer it grew. Industrialization was an emblem that fanned the flame of a nation (3). Hence, the industrialized nations forged for more aggressive inventions that would further enhance their industrialization.

The labor force that was increasing every day due to the robust process of industrialization was already thriving in their new town. The need for everything went high. More people were working in the industries, meaning that there was more money in circulation. People were also getting salary advancements and appraisals from their companies. These dynamics funneled modernization even the more. Towns grew more as the need to accommodate the rising demands and lifestyle changes. It became apparent that urbanization was no longer an extra provision but a necessity. While the government relied upon industrialization for prestige and economic growth, people depended on urbanization for their sustenance.

The Inventions of the Two Phenomena

There is a sharp difference in the inventions that served the two spheres.

The industrial revolution was one of the most successful periods of inventions in the late 16 th century and early 19 th century. The era was paving way for lesser philosophical intrigues and more scientific discoveries. Carriages came into being. Coal was then discovered to be an energy source. This led to the discovery of engines. Engines and machinery that relied on fuel to run. The discovery of machinery increased the efficiency of production in the industries. Railroads were constructed to ease the work of transportation.

The process of urbanization had its own inventions as well. People invented new ways to build better houses. Construction became sophisticated. Architectural and civil engineers found out better ways to make long lasting roads. Better means of transporting people were being discovered. Carriages continued to be refined for use by people. Walking became less stylish than using a carriage. City guards evolved to become administrative authorities who started to concern themselves over city planning and public health (4). Health centers came into the picture and the nursing profession was born.

As the invention in industrialization led to better ways of manufacturing and transporting, urbanization led to inventions that aimed at a much more cozy life for the developing working class.

Advantages

It is almost hilarious that the advantages for both industrialization and urbanization were different (5).

The industrialization advantages were more direct and defined.

Industrialization led to the creation of jobs for the poor village peasants

The process of production was short, reliable and very effective.

The manufactured products sold at a cheaper price.

More industries were developed

The GDP of the industrialized nations grew.

On the other hand, urbanization had its advantages as well.

People had dependable jobs and increased earnings

Health care was more efficient and reliable

The lifestyle of the people improved

Modernization led to the creation of jobs as well

Quality education was provided to sustain the needs of the industries

More cities developed

Lifestyle Differences

Both industrialization and urbanization affected the people differently. As much as the social lifestyle improved, there was a major difference that the two phenomena caused. Due to industrialization, the lifestyle that people lived was harsh. There were long hours to work in a day, the pay was meager and the working conditions were deplorable. For urbanization, the lifestyle of the people changed too. Selfish tendencies such as corruption emerged (6). People disregarded the need for family and society as well.

Monetary Perspectives

Though this correlation and differences are quite vague, there is a significant difference that shows how the availability of money influences both industrialization and urbanization.

When regarding industrialization, it is of significant importance to note that industrialization results from the want to realize more profits (7). Industrialization gained ground and prominence since a lot of income was expected as the end result. At the same time, urbanization is inspired by wants more than necessity. Financial power affects the tastes that an individual has in life (5). People with more financial power will always look for more expensive and classy lifestyle that drive urbanization. They will want fine restaurants, better houses, and better health care.

Conclusion

The major differences noted from the two phenomena portray that industrialization led to urbanization. Unless there was industrialization, chances are that urbanization would have taken longer to be felt. The industrial evolution which begun in Britain played a major role in shaping the perspective of these two terms as a major reference is given to the period of the revolution. Much emphasis, however, is put on the fact that both phenomena are closely linked. While urbanization would have been slow or impossible without industrialization. However, unless better living standards would have been identified and felt through urbanization, chances are that the negative practices such as inhumane treatment would have continued to clog the manufacturing sector up to date. It is the process of urbanization that exposed people to the reality that the lives of the people could be improved in the industrialization process.

Summary of the Difference between Industrialization and Urbanization

Definition

The process where people shift their economic activities to industrial manufacturing

The process of shifting from rural settings to urban towns and cities

Process

Industrialization evolves from the need to expand manufacturing operations

Urbanization results when people move to manufacturing cities and towns in search of better opportunities

Importance

The importance of industrialization is that it contributes to the growth of a country.

Urbanization is important as it helps in meeting the growing needs of the people.

Lifestyle

Industrialization affected the lives of the people negatively due to inhumane treatment

Urbanization helped to better the lives of people by creating efficient healthcare, better housing, and planned cities.

Email This Post : If you like this article or our site. Please spread the word. Share it with your friends/family.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As we all know, the world has developed a lot since the ages of industrialization in the 20 th century. Industrialization seasons were marked by a change in the social and economic phenomena. The transformation involved a paradigm shift from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

# data[].attributes.body
The reconstruction era took place after the Civil War. During this time, the torn apart nation tried to rebuild itself. Many laws were passed to prevent slavery from happening again. The country tried to continue on as a potentially racially integrated country and government. However, this resulted in the beginning of segregation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What was the Reconstruction era?

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Transcript

The period after the American Civil War is known as the Reconstruction era, when the United States grappled with reintegrating seceded states into the Union and determining the legal status of formerly enslaved Black Americans.
It's also a time rife with historical misconceptions-and without looking close, it may be hard to determine what really happened.
When was the Reconstruction era?
Reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1877. It began after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. His successor Andrew Johnson initiated what was called Presidential Reconstruction: the steps taken by the federal government from 1865 to 1867 to ensure that the nation would come back together. The second phase, known as Radical Reconstruction, was led by Congress and sought to secure the political and civil rights of formerly enslaved people. It lasted from 1867 to 1877.
What did Presidential Reconstruction look like?
Led by Johnson, Presidential Reconstruction was extremely lenient to the reintegrated South. All Southern whites, except wealthy landowners and Confederate leaders, received a blanket pardon for secession; most of those who didn't would later receive individual pardons.
As long as they agreed to abolish slavery and pay Confederate debts, Southern governments were allowed to manage their affairs as they pleased, including passing laws that limited the legal rights of Black Americans.
How was Reconstruction received by the American people?
Presidential Reconstruction frustrated many people. White Northern voters in the autumn 1866 congressional elections pressured lawmakers to begin anew, and the period of Radical Reconstruction followed as the new Congress outlined new rules for how Southern states could manage their governments. With voting rights now enforced nationwide for all men regardless of race, Black Southerners and antislavery white Southern allies precipitated the rise of the Republican Party in the former Confederate states.
African Americans were elected to public office throughout the South, some of them winning seats in Congress.
Who opposed Radical Reconstruction?
Many white Southerners, especially those who had been proslavery, were resentful of governments populated by Black Americans.
As multiracial governments passed laws against racial discrimination and segregation, bitter white Southerners spread the myth that Reconstruction was secretly establishing "Black supremacy" over whites.
How did Reconstruction end?
As anti-Reconstruction whites blamed Southern governmental corruption on the exclusion of wealthy white landowners, white Northern Republicans began getting more conservative.
Slowly, Republicans-and thus Black American voters-began losing power in the South. When Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president in 1876, he acknowledged and accepted Democratic control over the South.
By the turn of the century, white Amercicans once again had almost full control. Racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black voters were enforced, with no government censure in sight.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Happened After the Civil War? | The Reconstruction Era

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn more about the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War.

# data[].attributes.body
This supreme court decision was made in 1896 saying that segregation did not violate the 14th amendment. Separate but equal was fair because the 14th amendment was for Homer Plessy's civil rights, not his social rights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context

After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction.

Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for "Negro" or "colored" passengers.

Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.

Black Resistance to Segregation

As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was a law passed in Louisiana in 1890 "providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races." It stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.

Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case aimed at testing the law's constitutionality, was of mixed race; he described himself as "seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood."

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor's insistence, he was arrested and jailed.

Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson

Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.

Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson. In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not "social rights" (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument," Justice Henry Brown wrote, "to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

John Marshall Harlan's Dissent

Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky. Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era-but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: "The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution," he wrote. "It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

Plessy v. Ferguson Significance

The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of "separate but equal" as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century.

Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the 1899 case Cummings v. Board of Education, even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.

It would not be until the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with Harlan's opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson..

Writing the majority opinion in that 1954 case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place" in public education, calling segregated schools "inherently unequal," and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Sources

C. Vann Woodward, " Plessy v. Ferguson: The Birth of Jim Crow," American Heritage (Volume 15, Issue 3: April 1964).
Landmark Cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court - The First Hundred Years.
Louis Menand, "Brown v. Board of Education and the Limits of Law," The New Yorker (February 12, 2001).
Today in History - May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson, Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate But Equal Doctrine | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

# data[].attributes.body
The 15th Amendment was passed in 1870 and granted African American males the right to vote.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
February 3, 1870: The 15th amendment ratified

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
February 3, 1870: The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting voting rights to African American men.

# data[].attributes.body
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. It states that no state shall make or enforce any law that will deprive any person of their freedom, life, and liberty. They may also not be denied their due process or protection of the law.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This Saturday, June 13, 2020, marks the 154 th anniversary of the passage of the 14 th Amendment of the US Constitution. The amendment reads, in relevant part:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As the Supreme Court noted just a few years after the Amendment was ratified, the "main purpose of [the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th] amendments was the freedom of the African race, the security and perpetuation of that freedom, and their protection from the oppressions of the white men who had formerly held them in slavery." Yet, recent events involving black Americans and their encounters with police, including the killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others, show that the amendment has not functioned effectively as a tool for ensuring that black Americans receive equal protection of the laws.

Racial bias crops up at almost every level of the criminal justice system. Black individuals are more likely to be stopped by police, are more likely to be killed by police, are more likely be incarcerated, and are more likely to be sentenced to death than their white counterparts.

Most people might presume that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause would provide redress to victims of such racial discrimination by state and federal law enforcement entities. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to recognize overwhelming statistical data as evidence of racial discrimination.

In McCleskey v. Kemp, a 1987 case involving a black defendant convicted of killing a white police officer, the defense mounted a strong case that McCleskey's death sentence was infected with racial bias, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, by reference to a comprehensive statistical study. The study detailed tremendous racial bias in Georgia's criminal justice system where McCleskey was sentenced. Black defendants charged with killing a white victim, for instance, were eleven times more likely to receive a death sentence than a white defendant charged with killing a black victim. Moreover, the study determined that while prosecutors sought the death penalty in 70 percent of cases involving black defendants and white victims, they only sought the death penalty in 19 percent of cases involving white defendants and black victims.

Regardless, the Supreme Court held that McCleskey had not proven unequal treatment under the law because the evidence he relied on did not show that the prosecutors in his particular case pursued the death sentence on the basis of McCleskey's race. Such evidence would be virtually impossible for an individual to uncover, however, due to procedural rules shielding prosecutors from public scrutiny.

McCleskey made clear that racial discrimination perpetuated by the state, evidenced by appalling statistical data, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Legal scholars such as Michelle Alexander have asserted that the Court's decision "was driven by a desire to immunize the entire criminal justice system from claims of racial bias."

At the same time that the Court has repeatedly refused to recognize the Fourteenth Amendment as an avenue for addressing systemic racism in the criminal justice system, it has invited use of the Amendment by corporations claiming their own constitutional rights. As Justice Black noted in a dissenting opinion in 1938, "of the cases in this Court in which the Fourteenth Amendment was applied during the first fifty years after its adoption, less than one-half of 1 per cent. invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50 per cent. asked that its benefits be extended to corporations."

As we pointed out in our joint report with Greenpeace Contaminating the Courts: The Corporate Campaign to Misuse the Constitution to Attack the Environment:

Over the last 15 years, corporations have begun invoking... the Equal Protection Clause in challenging ... "discriminatory" legislation-arguing, for example, that treating a fracking company differently from sustainable producers is no different than discriminating based on race or sexual orientation. Though most judges have recognized the absurdity of this comparison, corporations have repeated the "equal protection" argument over and over, in hopes of triggering judicial amnesia as to the roots and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment.

These attempts by corporations to shield themselves from regulation by invoking the Constitution are especially concerning in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision in which the Court granted corporations even more tools with which to challenge laws designed to rein them in as violating their "constitutional rights." There, the Court referred to corporations not as artificial legal entities with state-granted powers, but as "disfavored speakers."

Meanwhile, the speakers actually disfavored by authorities-such as the Americans who are protesting in the streets against the policies, practices, and people that perpetuate racism and violence-are met with a harsh militaristic police response, and presidential incitement to murder.

One hundred and fifty four years later, it is clear that the guarantee of equal protection under the law for all remains unfulfilled and that the fight to ensure that this nation lives up to this promise must continue.

Read our statement on recent events.

Read our report on when racist abuse of office rises to the level of an impeachable offense.
This blog post was originally drafted by Sarah Fender, a 2020 summer legal intern at Free Speech For People.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Honoring the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection Under the Law - Free Speech For People

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This Saturday, June 13, 2020, marks the 154th anniversary of the passage of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

# data[].attributes.body
The 13th amendment was added to the constitution in 1865. It abolished slavery and indentured servitude unless as a form of punishment (jail sentence). Lincoln pushed this amendment into its passing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EnlargeDownload Link Citation: The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, January 31, 1865; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. View All Pages in the National Arch…

# data[].attributes.body
This Supreme Court decision, made in 1857, stated that the rights intended for an American citizen was not intended for and did not extend to anyone of the African descent. Scott was a freed slave who moved up North and sued the courts because he was no longer a slave and wanted the rights of a US citizen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Dred Scott Decision: Crash Course Black American History #16

# data[].attributes.body
The Women's movement was a reform for women to have equal rights as men. One of the issues was a pay gap for women doing the same job. Women were held back from better job positions because of their sex and prejudices around it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Past and Future of the Women’s Rights Movement | Women's History Month | PEOPLE

# data[].attributes.body
Definition: A policy of remining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, especially the goings on of other countries. This took place after World War 1.

# data[].attributes.body
Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal to get America out of The Great Depression and stabilize the economy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.

The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs, work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal programs reminded them of alphabet soup.

By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and social affairs of the nation.

To search for more documents in Loc.gov related to New Deal programs and agencies, use such terms as Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, Farm Security Administration, and the National Recovery Administration.

Documents

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal | Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Gettysburg Address was President Lincoln's speech after the Battle of Gettysburg that helped people understand that the principles given in the Declaration of Independence about human rights were the principles that were worth the sacrifices made by those killed in that tragic battle. 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Gettysburg Address was President Lincoln's speech after the Battle of Gettysburg that helped people understand that the principles given in the Declaration of Independence about human rights were the principles that were worth the sacrifices made by those killed in that tragic battle. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gettysburg address delivered at Gettysburg Pa. Nov. 19th, 1863. [n. p. n. d.].

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On verso: Gift Verner W. Clapp, July 9, 1952. Available also through the Library of Congress web site in two forms: as facsimile page images and as full text in SGML. Printed Ephemera Collection; Portfolio 244, Folder 45.

# data[].attributes.headline
Although the Thirteen original colonies were founded and governed differently, together, they had economies tied to commerce (through urban, factory type economies in the north or through rice and tobacco in the south) and they eventually came together in their fight for independence. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Although the Thirteen original colonies were founded and governed differently, together, they had economies tied to commerce (through urban, factory type economies in the north or through rice and tobacco in the south) and they eventually came together in their fight for independence. 

# data[].attributes.headline
Franklin Roosevelt became president during the Great Depression and then led the country (for four terms) through much of World War 2. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Franklin Roosevelt became president during the Great Depression and then led the country (for four terms) through much of World War 2. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Franklin D. Roosevelt - U.S. President | Mini Bio | BIO

# data[].attributes.headline
Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan are examples of robber barons or tycoons, individuals who control entire industries (oil, railroads, etc.) and amass a fortune through that control. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan are examples of robber barons or tycoons, individuals who control entire industries (oil, railroads, etc.) and amass a fortune through that control. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America's Gilded Age: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There was a time in U.S. history when the business magnates and titans of industry boasted more wealth than even today's top technology innovators and visionaries. During America's Gilded Age - which spanned most of the latter half of the 19th century, from around 1870 to 1900 - the inflation-adjusted wealth and impact of America's most towering figures far overshadowed what we see today.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Fugitive Slave Act, which was part of the Compromise of 1850, stated that slaves that had escaped their owners had to be returned even if they were in a free state. 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Fugitive Slave Act, which was part of the Compromise of 1850, stated that slaves that had escaped their owners had to be returned even if they were in a free state. 

# data[].attributes.headline
Ancient Rome's civilization has contributed to society today through  their government systems (law), engineering (their buildings and roads), and their ability to take the best parts of a society that they conquered and use it for themselves. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Ancient Rome's civilization has contributed to society today through  their government systems (law), engineering (their buildings and roads), and their ability to take the best parts of a society that they conquered and use it for themselves. 

# data[].attributes.headline
China's ancient civilization contributed to civilizations today through their invention/development of paper, moving type, gunpowder, and the compass.

# data[].attributes.subject
China's ancient civilization contributed to civilizations today through their invention/development of paper, moving type, gunpowder, and the compass.

# data[].attributes.headline
Westward expansion really began when Thomas Jefferson decided to purchase the Louisiana territory from France (and send Lewis and Clark to explore the new land) so that people could settle the frontier out west to expand the country. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Westward expansion really began when Thomas Jefferson decided to purchase the Louisiana territory from France (and send Lewis and Clark to explore the new land) so that people could settle the frontier out west to expand the country. 

# data[].attributes.headline
The Industrial Revolution was a time when, due to inventions like the steam engine and cotton gin, production was faster and goods were more quickly and easily given to consumers. 

# data[].attributes.subject
The Industrial Revolution was a time when, due to inventions like the steam engine and cotton gin, production was faster and goods were more quickly and easily given to consumers. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Industrial Revolution: Crash Course History of Science #21

# data[].attributes.headline
The Articles of Confederation was the first acting "constitution" of the United States, which helped the thirteen independent states work together until our current Constitution was signed.

# data[].attributes.subject
The Articles of Confederation was the first acting "constitution" of the United States, which helped the thirteen independent states work together until our current Constitution was signed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Articles of Confederation; 3/1/1781; Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774 - 1789; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, Record Group 360; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. View All Pages i…

# data[].attributes.headline
Thomas Jefferson severed as the governor of Virginia and help draft the Declaration of Independence.  

# data[].attributes.subject
Thomas Jefferson severed as the governor of Virginia and help draft the Declaration of Independence.  

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Declaration of Independence | Road to the Revolution

# data[].attributes.headline
George Washington as a young and inexperienced leader lead his troops to victory at Yorktown, which lead to independence for the new nation in 1781.

# data[].attributes.subject
George Washington as a young and inexperienced leader lead his troops to victory at Yorktown, which lead to independence for the new nation in 1781.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mount Vernon had the opportunity to speak with Michael Harris, author of the new book, Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777. Michael shares his views about the Brandywine Campaign and its importance to the American Revolution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
General Washington in the American Revolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
George Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army in 1775. Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, his leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation in 1781.

# data[].attributes.headline
John Adams was a delegate in the Continental Congress who helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris

# data[].attributes.subject
John Adams was a delegate in the Continental Congress who helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris

# data[].attributes.headline
King George passed the Tea Tax on the colonies.  This tax the colonies without representation. 

# data[].attributes.subject
King George passed the Tea Tax on the colonies.  This tax the colonies without representation. 

# data[].attributes.headline
American Revolution Causes: There wasn't one event that caused this but a series of events that lead to banding together of the 13 colonies. Some these events were: The Stamp Act, The Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Part, The Coercive Acts, Lexington and Concord, and British attacks on coastal towns.  

# data[].attributes.subject
American Revolution Causes: There wasn't one event that caused this but a series of events that lead to banding together of the 13 colonies. Some these events were: The Stamp Act, The Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Part, The Coercive Acts, Lexington and Concord, and British attacks on coastal towns.  

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Taxes & Smuggling - Prelude to Revolution: Crash Course US History #6

# data[].attributes.headline
Indian Removal Act (1830): This act gave President Jackson the ability to grant land west of the Mississippi that belong to Native Americans that bordered existing states. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Indian Removal Act (1830): This act gave President Jackson the ability to grant land west of the Mississippi that belong to Native Americans that bordered existing states. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The U.S. Government used treaties as one means to displace Indians from their tribal lands, a mechanism that was strengthened with the Removal Act of 1830. In cases where this failed, the government sometimes violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans westward across the continent.

As the 19th century began, land-hungry Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal government to remove them. Although Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe argued that the Indian tribes in the Southeast should exchange their land for lands west of the Mississippi River, they did not take steps to make this happen. Indeed, the first major transfer of land occurred only as the result of war.

In 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (in present day Alabama near the Georgia border), where Jackson's force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power. He then forced upon the Indians a treaty whereby they surrendered to the United States over twenty-million acres of their traditional land-about one-half of present day Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.

Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes-specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw-realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war. The appetite of the settlers for land would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement. They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it. The Seminole tribe in Florida resisted, in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855-1858), however, neither appeasement nor resistance worked.

From a legal standpoint, the United States Constitution empowered Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." In early treaties negotiated between the federal government and the Indian tribes, the latter typically acknowledged themselves "to be under the protection of the United States of America, and of no other sovereign whosoever." When Andrew Jackson became president (1829-1837), he decided to build a systematic approach to Indian removal on the basis of these legal precedents.

To achieve his purpose, Jackson encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Act established a process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government forever. With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast.

In general terms, Jackson's government succeeded. By the end of his presidency, he had signed into law almost seventy removal treaties, the result of which was to move nearly 50,000 eastern Indians to Indian Territory-defined as the region belonging to the United States west of the Mississippi River but excluding the states of Missouri and Iowa as well as the Territory of Arkansas-and open millions of acres of rich land east of the Mississippi to white settlers. Despite the vastness of the Indian Territory, the government intended that the Indians' destination would be a more confined area-what later became eastern Oklahoma.

The Cherokee Nation resisted, however, challenging in court the Georgia laws that restricted their freedoms on tribal lands. In his 1831 ruling on Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that "the Indian territory is admitted to compose a part of the United States," and affirmed that the tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and "their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." However, the following year the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled that Indian tribes were indeed sovereign and immune from Georgia laws. President Jackson nonetheless refused to heed the Court's decision. He obtained the signature of a Cherokee chief agreeing to relocation in the Treaty of New Echota, which Congress ratified against the protests of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay in 1835. The Cherokee signing party represented only a faction of the Cherokee, and the majority followed Principal Chief John Ross in a desperate attempt to hold onto their land. This attempt faltered in 1838, when, under the guns of federal troops and Georgia state militia, the Cherokee tribe were forced to the dry plains across the Mississippi. The best evidence indicates that between three and four thousand out of the fifteen to sixteen thousand Cherokees died en route from the brutal conditions of the "Trail of Tears."

With the exception of a small number of Seminoles still resisting removal in Florida, by the 1840s, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, no Indian tribes resided in the American South. Through a combination of coerced treaties and the contravention of treaties and judicial determination, the United States Government succeeded in paving the way for the westward expansion and the incorporation of new territories as part of the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Milestones: 1830-1860 - Office of the Historian

# data[].attributes.headline
Trail of Tears: The path in which around 60,000 Native Americans were forced to walk that displaced them from their homes as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

# data[].attributes.subject
Trail of Tears: The path in which around 60,000 Native Americans were forced to walk that displaced them from their homes as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trail of Tears: Definition, Date & Cherokee Nation - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Trail of Tears was the deadly route Native Americans were forced to follow when they were pushed off their ancestral lands and into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

# data[].attributes.headline
Secondary Source: These are sources that can tell about the primary source (a step removed). Examples of secondary sources would be: essays, textbooks, biographies, political commentary, or critical works. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Secondary Source: These are sources that can tell about the primary source (a step removed). Examples of secondary sources would be: essays, textbooks, biographies, political commentary, or critical works. 

# data[].attributes.headline
Primary Source: A firsthand source of an event.  This can be in the from of a letter, journal, photo, novels, short stories, autobiographies, and new articles. 

# data[].attributes.subject
Primary Source: A firsthand source of an event.  This can be in the from of a letter, journal, photo, novels, short stories, autobiographies, and new articles. 

# data[].attributes.headline
Chronology: The order of events in history. Starting with the earliest followed the next in line in which they occurred.

# data[].attributes.subject
Chronology: The order of events in history. Starting with the earliest followed the next in line in which they occurred.