Smart conversation from the National Constitution Center
Today marks the birthday of Ulysses Grant, who played a unique role in American history. Here is a look at a military leader who later became president in one of the nation’s most troubled decades.
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died from his assassin’s wounds. But if John Wilkes Booth’s plot were entirely successful, a little-known senator may have been thrust into the White House for almost a year.
It was 153 years ago when President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford’s Theater. Lincoln died the next morning, and in the aftermath, some odd facts seemed to pop up.
On a Palm Sunday 153 years ago today, Confederate General Robert E. Lee agreed to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia, marking a symbolic end to the Civil War.
On this day in 1793, young inventor Eli Whitney had his U.S. patent for the cotton gin approved, an invention that would definitely have an impact on social and economic conditions that led to the Civil War.
On March 11, 1861, delegates from the newly formed Confederate States of America agreed on their own constitution. And much of it mirrored the Constitution of the United States as it existed at the time.
On March 3, 1820, Congress approved the Missouri compromise, a law that maintained a balance in the Senate between free and slave states. The pact only lasted 24 years, and its elimination was one of the contributing factors that led to the Civil War.
On this day in 1861, former U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis took to a podium for his presidential inauguration and gave an impassioned speech about the Constitution. Three weeks later, Abraham Lincoln did likewise, to much different results.
On December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified after the state of Georgia approved the amendment as it was proposed to the states by Congress. That act officially ended the practice of slavery in the United States.
On November 24, 1784, future President Zachary Taylor was born in Virginia. Taylor became an unexpected obstacle to slavery’s expansion, until his sudden death in 1850.