📅 5 August 1996
The US Congress enacted legislation authorizing sanctions on certain foreign investment in Iran’s petroleum sector. The law extended US pressure beyond direct US-Iran commerce and put third-country...
📅 2 March 1807
Congress enacted a ban on importing enslaved people into the United States, effective 1 January 1808. The law did not abolish slavery, the domestic slave trade, or the forced movement of people within...
📅 1 January 1808
The federal prohibition on importing enslaved people took effect. Slavery remained legal, and the internal trade forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of people from the Upper South to expanding cotton...
📅 15 May 1820
Congress classified the international slave trade as piracy, punishable by death under federal law. The statute strengthened the legal ban on importation but was rarely enforced to match its stated...
📅 18 September 1850
Congress passed a law requiring federal authorities and residents to assist in the capture and return of people who escaped slavery. It denied alleged freedom seekers ordinary legal protections and...
📅 6 December 1865
The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery except as punishment for crime. Emancipation resulted from generations of resistance, the Civil War, Black military service, and political...
📅 12 February 1793
The first federal Fugitive Slave Act created procedures to seize and return people accused of escaping slavery. It denied alleged fugitives a jury trial and punished those who aided them. Black...
📅 6 March 1820
The compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and barred slavery north of a specified latitude in part of the Louisiana Purchase. It managed sectional power rather...
📅 30 May 1854
The act organized Kansas and Nebraska territories and allowed settlers to decide whether slavery would be permitted, repealing the Missouri Compromise restriction. It intensified armed conflict and...
📅 16 April 1862
Congress ended slavery in the federal district and paid compensation to enslavers, while formerly enslaved residents received no comparable payment. Black Washingtonians had petitioned and organized...
📅 17 July 1862
The act declared enslaved people held by people engaged in rebellion against the United States to be free and empowered the president to employ Black men in military service. Its reach depended on...
📅 9 April 1866
The act recognized national citizenship and declared equal civil rights for people born in the United States, including formerly enslaved people. It answered Black Codes and racial violence that...
📅 9 July 1868
The amendment made people born or naturalized in the United States citizens and required states to provide due process and equal protection. It overturned the citizenship logic of Dred Scott, though...
📅 3 February 1870
The amendment barred federal and state governments from denying the vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Black voters and officeholders helped reshape Reconstruction...
📅 3 March 1806
Congress passed legislation in advance of the constitutional deadline, setting penalties for importing enslaved people from abroad beginning in 1808. The law prohibited legal importation but did not...
