13th Amendment To The U.S. Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective on January 1, 1863, declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas (and thus almost all slaves) were free. When they escaped to Union lines or federal forces (including now-former slaves) advanced south, emancipation occurred without any compensation to the former owners. Texas was the last Confederate slave state, where enforcement of the proclamation was declared on June 19, 1865. In the slave-owning areas controlled by Union forces on J ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the Federal government of the United States, federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the United States Congress, legislative, consisting of the bicameralism, bicameral Congress (Article One of the United States Constitution, Article I); the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive, consisting of the President of the United States, president and subordinate officers (Article Two of the United States Constitution, Article II); and the Federal judiciary of the United States, judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court of the Unit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Slave States And Free States
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to his or her owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies that arose between slave and free states. By the 18th century, slavery was legal throughout the Thirteen Colonies, but at the time of the American Revolution, rebel colonies started to abolish the pra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scourged Back By McPherson & Oliver, 1863, Retouched
A scourge is a whip or lash, especially a multi-thong type, used to inflict severe corporal punishment or self-mortification. It is usually made of leather. Etymology The word is most commonly considered to be derived from Old French ''escorgier'' - "to whip", going further back to the Vulgar Latin ''excorrigiare'': the Latin prefix ''ex''- "out, off" with its additional English meaning of "thoroughly", plus ''corrigia'' - "thong", or in this case "whip". Some connect it to , "to flay", built of two Latin parts, ''ex''- ("off") and , "skin". Description A scourge (; diminutive: ) consists of a rope with metal balls, bones, and metal spikes. History Symbol of Osiris The scourge, or flail, and the crook are the two symbols of power and domination depicted in the hands of Osiris in Egyptian monuments. The shape of the flail or scourge is unchanged throughout history. However, when a scourge is described as a 'flail' as depicted in Egyptian mythology, it may be referring to us ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Codes (United States)
The Black Codes, also called the Black Laws, were racially discriminatory U.S. state laws that limited the freedom of Black Americans but not of White Americans. The first Black Codes applied to " free Negroes," i.e., black people who lived in states where slavery had been abolished or who lived in a slave state but were not enslaved. After chattel slavery was abolished throughout the United States in 1865, former slave states in the U.S. South enacted Black Codes to restrict all black citizens, especially the emancipated freedmen who were no longer subject to control by slaveholders. Since the colonial period, colonies and states had passed laws that discriminated against free Blacks. In the South, these were generally included in " slave codes"; the goal was to suppress the influence of free blacks (particularly after slave rebellions) because of their potential influence on slaves. Free men of color were denied the vote in the North Carolina Constitutional Convention ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. The 16th vice president, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Southern Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket in the 1864 presidential election, coming to office as the American Civil War concluded. Johnson favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the newly freed people who were formerly enslaved, as well as pardoning ex-Confederates. This led to conflict with the Republican Party-dominated U.S. Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote. Johnson was born into poverty and never attended school. He was apprenticed as a tailor and worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee, serving as an alderman and mayor before bei ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Assassination Of President Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play '' Our American Cousin'' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 a.m. in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. His funeral and burial were marked by an extended period of national mourning. Near the end of the American Civil War, Lincoln's assassination was part of a larger political conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the federal government. Conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson's would-be atta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Border States (American Civil War)
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south. Of the 34 U.S. states in 1861, nineteen were free states and fifteen were slave including the four border states; each of the latter held a comparatively low percentage of slaves. Delaware never declared for secession. Maryland was largely prevented from seceding by local unionists and federal troops. Two others, Kentucky and Missouri, saw rival governments, though their territory mostly stayed in Union control after 1862. Four others did not declare for secession until after the Battle of Fort Sumter and were briefly considered border states: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tenness ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Union (American Civil War)
The Union was the central government of the United States during the American Civil War. Its civilian and military forces resisted the Confederate State of America, Confederacy's attempt to Secession in the United States, secede following the 1860 United States presidential election, election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's administration asserted the permanency of the federal government of the United States, federal government and the continuity of the Constitution of the United States, United States Constitution. Nineteenth-century Americans commonly used the term Union to mean either the federal government of the United States or the unity of the states within the Federalism in the United States, federal constitutional framework. The Union can also refer to the people or territory of the states that remained loyal to the national government during the war. The loyal states are also known as the North, although fou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fugitive Slave Clause
The Fugitive Slave Clause in the United States Constitution, also known as either the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labor Clause, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which requires a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who flees to another state to be returned to his or her master in the state from which that person escaped. The enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for criminal acts, has made the clause mostly irrelevant. Text The text of the Fugitive Slave Clause is: Similar to other references in the Constitution dealing with slavery, the words "slave" and "slavery" are not used in this clause. Historian Donald Fehrenbacher believes that throughout the Constitution there was the intent to make it clear that slavery existed only under state law, not federal law. In this instance, Fehrenbacher concludes: Background Prior to the America ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Direct Tax
Although the actual definitions vary between jurisdictions, in general, a direct tax is a tax imposed upon a person or property as distinct from a tax imposed upon a transaction, which is described as an indirect tax. There is a distinction between direct and indirect taxes depending on whether the tax payer is the actual taxpayer or if the amount of tax is supported by a third party, usually a client. The term may be used in economic and political analyses, and may have legal implications in some jurisdictions. In the United States of America, the term has special constitutional significance because of two provisions in the U.S. Constitution that any ''direct taxes'' imposed by the national government be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. It is also significant in the European Union, where direct taxation remains the sole responsibility of member states. General meaning In general, a direct tax is one imposed upon an individual person (juristic person, jurist ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States Electoral College
In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the President of the United States, president and Vice President of the United States, vice president in the United States presidential election, presidential election. This process is described in Article Two of the United States Constitution, Article Two of the Constitution. The number of electors from each U.S. state, state is equal to that state's United States congressional apportionment, congressional delegation which is the number of List of current United States senators, senators (two) plus the number of US Representatives, Representatives for that state. Each state Article II of the United States Constitution#Clause 2: Method of choosing electors, appoints electors using legal procedures determined by its State legislature (United States), legislature. Federal government of the United States, Federal office holders, inclu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States House Of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the United States Constitution, Article One of the Constitution of the United States, U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation, known as Bill (United States Congress), bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to President of the United States, the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, Impeachment in the United States, impeaching federal officers, and Contingent election, electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the United States Electoral College, Electoral College. Members of the House serve a Fixed-term election, fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |