APUSH TIME PERIOD 5 PEOPLE

jaden still fat chud

Susan B. Anthony

A pivotal leader in the women's suffrage movement; she co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and was famously arrested for attempting to vote in 1872.

Clara Barton

most important for pioneering battlefield nursing during the Civil War, bringing vital supplied, transforming nursing into a respected field for women.

John Wilkes Booth

A Confederate sympathizer who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, altering the course of Reconstruction.

John Brown

A radical abolitionist who led a violent raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry (1859) hoping to start a slave rebellion; he became a martyr for the North.

James Buchanan

His inaction and failure to resolve escalating sectional tensions over slavery, contributing significantly to the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War.

Anthony Burns

A fugitive slave whose 1854 arrest and forced return to the South under the Fugitive Slave Act sparked massive riots in Boston and radicalized Northern opinion.

John C. Calhoun

A South Carolina Senator and "War Hawk" who championed nullification and the idea that slavery was a "positive good," setting the intellectual stage for secession.

Henry Clay

Known as the "Great Compromiser"; he was the primary architect of the Compromise of 1850, which temporarily eased tensions between the North and South.

John Crittenden

Proposed the Crittenden Compromise (1860), a last-ditch effort to avoid war by permanently protecting slavery south of the 36°30′ line; it was rejected by Lincoln.

Jefferson Davis

The first and only President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Stephen Douglas

An Illinois Senator who championed popular sovereignty (letting settlers decide on slavery) and authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Frederick Douglass

A formerly enslaved man who became the most prominent abolitionist orator and writer; his autobiography and newspaper, The North Star, were influential.

Millard Fillmore

The 13th President (1850–1853); he signed the Compromise of 1850 into law, including the controversial Fugitive Slave Act.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

A Confederate general known for his cavalry tactics; he was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan after the war.

John Fremont

An explorer known as "The Pathfinder" and the first Republican candidate for President (1856), running on an anti-slavery platform.

William Lloyd Garrison

A radical abolitionist and editor of The Liberator; he famously burned a copy of the Constitution, calling it a "covenant with death."

Ulysses S. Grant

The lead Union General who accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox; he later served as the 18th President, overseeing much of Reconstruction.

Horace Greeley

Influential editor of the New York Tribune who promoted Western expansion ("Go West, young man") and later ran for President against Grant in 1872.

John Hale

A New Hampshire Senator and one of the first outspoken abolitionists in Congress; he was a leader of the Free Soil Party.

Rutherford B. Hayes

The 19th President; his election in the Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South

Stonewall Jackson

highly skilled Confederate General famous for his victory at the First Battle of Bull Run; his death by "friendly fire" was a major blow to the South.

Andrew Johnson

The 17th President who took over after Lincoln’s assassination; his lenient "Presidential Reconstruction" led to his impeachment by Radical Republicans.

Robert E. Lee

The Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia; despite personal reservations about secession, he became the symbol of the Southern cause.

Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President; he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and delivered the Gettysburg Address.

George A. Meade

The Union General best known for defeating Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the war.

George B. McClellan

A Union General known for being overly cautious; he ran against Lincoln as a "Peace Democrat" in the Election of 1864.

John L. O’Sullivan

The columnist and editor who coined the term "Manifest Destiny" in 1845 to justify American expansion to the Pacific.

Franklin Pierce

The 14th President (1853–1857); he signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which led to the violent "Bleeding Kansas" period.

James K. Polk

The 11th President (1845–1849); he successfully pursued Manifest Destiny through the Mexican-American War and the Oregon Treaty.

Dred Scott

An enslaved man who sued for his freedom; the Supreme Court's ruling in his case (Dred Scott v. Sandford) declared that Black people were not citizens.

Winfield Scott

A hero of the Mexican-American War who developed the Anaconda Plan, the Union's strategic plan to blockade and divide the South.

William H. Seward

Lincoln’s Secretary of State; he is best known for the purchase of Alaska (1867), originally mocked as "Seward’s Folly."

Horatio Seymour

The Democratic candidate in the 1868 election; he opposed the 15th Amendment and campaigned on a platform of white supremacy.

Philip Sheridan

A Union General whose "scorched earth" campaign in the Shenandoah Valley destroyed the South’s ability to feed its army.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The Union General who led the "March to the Sea," using "total war" tactics to break the South’s economic and psychological will to fight.

Edwin Stanton

Lincoln’s Secretary of War; his firing by Andrew Johnson triggered the Tenure of Office Act and Johnson’s impeachment.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A leading feminist who organized the Seneca Falls Convention and wrote the "Declaration of Sentiments" demanding the right to vote.

Thaddeus Stevens

A leader of the Radical Republicans in Congress who pushed for harsh punishment for the South and civil rights for formerly enslaved people.

Lucy Stone

A prominent abolitionist and suffragist who famously refused to take her husband’s last name, becoming a symbol of women’s independence.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), a novel that humanized the horrors of slavery and moved Northern public opinion toward abolition.

Charles Sumner

An abolitionist Senator who was beaten with a cane on the Senate floor by Preston Brooks after giving an anti-slavery speech.

Roger Taney

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case, ruling that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

Zachary Taylor

A hero of the Mexican-American War and the 12th President; he died in office during the heated debates over the Compromise of 1850.

Sojourner Truth

A formerly enslaved woman who became a powerful speaker for both abolition and women's rights; famous for her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech.

Harriet Tubman

The most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, she led dozens of enslaved people to freedom and later served as a Union spy.

Daniel Webster

A Northern Senator and orator who supported the Compromise of 1850 in his "7th of March" speech to preserve the Union, losing abolitionist support.

David Wilmot

A Congressman who proposed the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico; it failed but intensified sectional tension.