Founded in 1854, the Republican Party opposed the expansion of slavery to new territories such as Kansas. The other parties contained members who held anti-slavery views, but they also included members who either owned slaves or supported slavery. 

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was defeated in the Battle of Antietam; however, it was able to escape back into Virginia after the battle. It did not surrender to the Union Army until April 1865 during the Appomattox Campaign.   

The Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in the immediate months after the Civil War ended. The intention behind them was to force freedmen into a labor system that was virtually the same as slavery. For example, a law passed in Mississippi stated that authorities could take children away from parents who allegedly could not support them. The children would then be "apprenticed" to their former slave masters who could perform corporal punishment on them. Outrage over the Black Codes in the North led to increased support for the policies of the Radical Republicans.

The 1862 Homestead Act was passed to encourage settlement in the Western United States by small farmers. It encouraged the widespread migration of Americans to the West after the Civil War. It also led to increased conflicts between the Federal Government and Native groups like the Lakota.

By 1863 Vicksburg, Mississippi was the last city along the Mississippi River that was still under the control of the Confederate forces. It's capture by Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant gave the Union complete control over the Mississippi and cut off Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana from the rest of the Confederacy.

The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States, was enacted in 1865 after the Civil War ended with the defeat of the Confederacy. The dispute over slavery was the main cause of both Southern secession and the American Civil War.

The Union had to invade and conquer wide swaths of Southern territory in order to defeat the rebellion. It was hoped by Confederate officials that a long and bloody conflict would lead to war weariness in the North and force the United States to recognize Southern independence. 

The Copperheads were a faction of Northern Democrats who wanted an immediate peace with the Southern Confederacy, even if that peace meant independence for the rebellious states. A famous Copperhead was Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham, who was put on trial for treason in 1864.  

These words are excerpted from the speech that Abraham Lincoln gave for his second inauguration as President in March, 1865. It was becoming clear that the Civil War would end soon in Union victory by the time President Lincoln gave this speech, so he wanted to remind his fellow Americans why the bloody and terrible war had been fought in the first place. Although Lincoln argued for reconciliation between the North and South elsewhere in his speech, he also argued that white Americans owed a tremendous debt to black Americans for the brutal system of slavery.

The above quote is taken from a speech given by John C. Calhoun defending the doctrine of nullification, the theory that states could invalidate Federal laws they believed were unconstitutional.  Calhoun is often seen as the paragon of a states’ rights Southern politician thanks to his role in the Nullification Crisis of 1831-32, where he resigned his position as Vice President to Andrew Jackson due to their disagreement on South Carolina’s attempted Nullification of the Tariff of 1832.