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Emancipation Proclamation

(Encyclopedia)Emancipation Proclamation, in U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America. The proclamation did not reflect Lincoln's desired solution for the slavery p...

Catholic Emancipation

(Encyclopedia)Catholic Emancipation, term applied to the process by which Roman Catholics in the British Isles were relieved in the late 18th and early 19th cent. of civil disabilities. They had been under oppressi...

Juneteenth

(Encyclopedia)Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, June 19th, holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. It began in Texas when news of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (effective Jan. 1, 1863) fina...

Emancipation, Edict of

(Encyclopedia)Emancipation, Edict of, 1861, the mechanism by which Czar Alexander II freed all Russian serfs (one third of the total population). All personal serfdom was abolished, and the peasants were to receive...

Seymour, Horatio

(Encyclopedia)Seymour, Horatio sēˈmôr, sēˈmər [key], 1810–86, American politician, b. Pompey Hill, N.Y. He studied law at Utica, N.Y. and was admitted to the bar in 1832. A Democrat, he was military secreta...

Garrison, William Lloyd

(Encyclopedia)Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805–79, American abolitionist, b. Newburyport, Mass. He supplemented his limited schooling with newspaper work and in 1829 went to Baltimore to aid Benjamin Lundy in publis...

executive order

(Encyclopedia)executive order, in the United States, official document initiated and signed by the president containing directives concerning how the executive branch shall carry out its responsibilities under the ...

Franklin, John Hope

(Encyclopedia)Franklin, John Hope, 1915–2009, the dean of 20th-century African-American historians, b. Rentiesville, Okla., grad. Fisk Univ. (A.B., 1935), Harvard (M.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1941). Franklin served on the...

Antietam campaign

(Encyclopedia)Antietam campaign ăntēˈtəm [key], Sept., 1862, of the Civil War. After the second battle of Bull Run, Gen. Robert E. Lee crossed the Potomac to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. At Frederick, Md.,...

Sumner, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Sumner, Charles, 1811–74, U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851–74), b. Boston. He attended (1831–33) and was later a lecturer at Harvard law school, was admitted (1834) to the bar, and practice...