1800s
1800–1899The domestic slave trade, civil war, emancipation, and the betrayal of Reconstruction.
Zoom in — decades
Key events
- August 21, 1831Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner leads the most consequential slave revolt in US history, terrifying the South into harsher repression.
- September 18, 1850The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
A federal law compelling citizens to capture escapees — radicalizing the North and endangering all Black Americans.
- December 1850Harriet Tubman escapes and returns
After escaping slavery, Tubman makes repeated trips back via the Underground Railroad, freeing dozens.
- March 6, 1857Dred Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court rules that Black people are not citizens and have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
- October 16, 1859John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's failed raid to arm the enslaved pushes the nation toward civil war.
- January 1, 1863The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln declares the enslaved in rebel states free, transforming the war into a fight for freedom.
- June 19, 1865Juneteenth: freedom reaches Texas
Union troops announce emancipation in Galveston — two and a half years after the Proclamation.
- December 6, 1865The 13th Amendment
Slavery is abolished — except as punishment for crime, a loophole that enables convict leasing.
- December 24, 1865The Ku Klux Klan is founded
A terror organization forms in Tennessee to attack Black citizens and Reconstruction.
- July 9, 1868The 14th Amendment
Citizenship and equal protection are written into the Constitution.
- March 2, 1877The Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction
Federal troops withdraw from the South, abandoning Black citizens to white-supremacist "Redeemer" governments.
- May 18, 1896Plessy v. Ferguson
The Supreme Court blesses "separate but equal," constitutionalizing Jim Crow for half a century.
- August 30, 1800Gabriel's Rebellion
An enslaved blacksmith plans a large revolt near Richmond; betrayed and executed, it terrifies Virginia.
- January 1, 1808Congress bans the Atlantic slave trade
The legal import of enslaved Africans ends — but the domestic slave trade explodes, tearing families apart.
Resources from this period
Primary sources·8
Citizenship and equal protection, 1868.
The full text of Lincoln's 1863 proclamation.
The 1857 Supreme Court decision.
The original 1865 order announcing emancipation in Texas.
Primary documents on the 1896 decision that constitutionalized "separate but equal."
The amendment abolishing slavery, ratified December 6, 1865.
Service records of ~179,000 men of the United States Colored Troops.
Federal records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.