‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided . . . Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and put it in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old, as well as new.

—Abraham...

The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision denied the citizenship of African Americans and the right of the federal government to control slavery in US territories. In 1846, Missouri slave Dred Scott had sued for his freedom. Scott argued that while he had been the slave of an army surgeon, he had lived for four years in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory, and that his residence on free soil had erased his slave status. In 1850 a Missouri court gave Scott his freedom, but two years later, the Missouri supreme...

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and a band of followers, black and white, attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The raid was part of a larger plan to destroy the slave system by freeing and arming slaves. The raiders were captured and John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859. The unique documents discussed here examine John Brown’s beliefs and actions in the context of growing national divisions over slavery in the 1850s.

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After the Civil War, African Americans were under attack as they struggled for equal rights in America. Laws were put in place during Reconstruction to assure Freedmen basic civil rights. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments gave former slaves freedom, citizenship, equal privileges in each state under federal law, and the right to vote.

Many southern states made their own laws in order to block the equal treatment of African Americans. Poll taxes, black codes, and Jim Crow laws are...