The Wilmot Proviso was first proposed in 1847 as a provision on a larger bill. It was an attempt at banning the extension of slavery into any territories acquired from the Mexican-American War; however, it was blocked in Congress by Southern opposition in the Senate. It is considered a major moment in the attempts to unify the disparate economies and social systems of the North and South by compromising on the issue of slavery prior to the Civil War.

Jefferson Davis was the President of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were generals in the Union Army. Robert E. Lee was the commander of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The leadership of the Confederate army was considered one of the strengths of the South during the Civil War.

The Underground Railroad is a metaphor for a system of known routes and safe houses used by slaves escaping from the South to the North. The Railroad was used by several tens of thousands of escaped slaves in the years immediately before and during the Civil War.

The American Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865. The war broke out between the North and the South over a series of issues. Popular history tends to remember the issue of slavery as being the most important, but the primary reason why the South seceded from the Union was that they no longer felt they could be adequately represented in government. The population of the North at the time was almost three times as large as the South, and the economic and industrial interests of the country were all rooted in the North.

The American Civil War was fought from 1861 until 1865, between the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). The primary reason for the outbreak of conflict was that the South no longer felt that it had any say in the running of the national government; they felt marginalized and that their economic interests (particularly the institution of slavery) were under threat. The war ended with a Union victory and the maintenance of the United States of America as one whole country. 

Jim Crow Laws were designed to enforce racial segregation of whites and blacks in the Reconstruction-era South. They were also designed to try and prevent blacks from voting or from achieving social mobility. Most of the Jim Crow Laws were in effect for much of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.

The Reconstruction period of American history occurred in the decades after the Civil War. It is named after the attempts by the United States government not only to reconstruct the internal infrastructure and industry of the nation, but also to "reconstruct" the feeling of unity and solidarity between the North and the South. It is a period of time marked by existing intense sectionalism and racial segregation.

The Wade-Davis Bill was proposed by radical Republicans in 1864, when it was becoming clear that the Confederacy was going to lose the Civil War. The Wade-Davis Bill represented an attempt to make it more difficult, and more humiliating, for the states of former Confederate politicians to reintegrate themselves into the Union. The Bill was opposed by Abraham Lincoln, who favored a ten-percent plan, which required only ten-percent of those who had voted in 1860 to swear allegiance to the Union government. Lincoln felt that the Wade-Davis Bill would hinder the development of positive relationships between the North and South and so employed his veto.

Given that Andrew Johnson was the first President to be impeached (his trial famously failed to convict in the Senate by one vote) and that radical Republicans controlled the House after the Civil War, it is obvious that their relationship would have been negative. The radical Republicans wanted harsh terms imposed on the former Confederate states, whereas Johnson favored reintegrating smoothly and easily. The disagreement between the two groups led to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1867.

The Wade-Davis Bill was proposed by two radical republicans in 1864 in an attempt to make readmittance into the Union very challenging and humiliating for former Confederates. Under the plan, the Union army would take control of enforcing the end of slavery, and any Confederate politician who wanted to reenter Union political life would have to swear both complete loyalty and that he or she had never been personally culpable for encouraging rebellion during the Civil War.