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Walker, Kara Elizabeth

(Encyclopedia) Walker, Kara Elizabeth,1969–, American artist, b. Stockton, Calif., grad. Atlanta College of Art (B.F.A., 1981), Rhode Island School of Design (M.F.A., 1994). Walker is best known for…

Missouri Compromise

(Encyclopedia) Missouri Compromise, 1820–21, measures passed by the U.S. Congress to end the first of a series of crises concerning the extension of slavery. By 1818, Missouri Territory had gained…

Brown, William Wells

(Encyclopedia) Brown, William Wells, 1814–84, African-American abolitionist, writer, and doctor, b. near Lexington, Ky. Born into slavery, the child of a black slave mother and a white slaveholding…

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…

Dred Scott Case

(Encyclopedia) Dred Scott Case, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856–57. It involved the then bitterly contested issue of the status of slavery in the federal territories. In 1834, Dred Scott…

Compromise of 1850

(Encyclopedia) Compromise of 1850. The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the…

Fogel, Robert William

(Encyclopedia) Fogel, Robert William, 1926–2013, American economic historian, b. New York City, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1964. He taught at Univ. of Chicago (1964–75, 1981–2013) and Harvard (1975–81). In…

Crittenden Compromise

(Encyclopedia) Crittenden Compromise, in U.S. history, unsuccessful last-minute effort to avert the Civil War. It was proposed in Congress as a constitutional amendment in Dec., 1860, by Sen. John J…

Douglass, Frederick

(Encyclopedia) Douglass, FrederickDouglass, Frederickdŭgˈləs [key], c.1818–1895, American abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md. as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. The son of a black slave, Harriet…