John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was a United States politician from South Carolina who served as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.In 1832, Calhoun resigned from the vice p...

Henry Clay (1777-1852), who has been called the "Great Pacificator" and the "The Great Compromiser," was a U.S. congressman, senator, statesman, and a twice-unsuccessful presidential candidate from...

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. After a distinguished career in national politics as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, Davis...

Frederick Douglass (c.1817-1895), born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was a runaway slave, a supporter of women's rights, and probably the most prominent abolitionist and human rights leader...

Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) was an Illinois politician who dominated the U.S. Senate throughout the 1850s.He is perhaps best remembered for engaging in a series of fiery debates with Republi...

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America for the central role he played in drafting the Declaration of Independence.During the American...

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States during one of the most dun-dun-dun periods in American history, the Civil War.Before being elected president, Lincoln...

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) was a wealthy Harvard Law School graduate who gave up his career and social prestige in order to join up with the abolitionist cause in 1835. He became one of its most...

Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a slave who, in the 1840s, chose to sue his master's widow for his freedom. He argued that his master, John Emerson, escorted him onto free soil in Illinois and the Wis...

Alexander Stephens (1812-1883) was a politician who served in the Georgia legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before the Civil War.Throughout his career, Stephens defended slaver...

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an American abolitionist and novelist who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most influential books in American history.Her father was Lyman Beecher, pastor o...

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1777-1864) was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In 1835, President Andrew Jackson nominated Taney, a fellow Democrat, to fill the position t...

Harriet Tubman (c.1820-1913), originally Araminta Ross, was a runaway slave and abolitionist who guided some 300 fellow runaways to freedom as one of the most famous and successful "conductors" on...

David Walker (c.1796-1830) was a free Black man, a self-taught clothes dealer, a radical abolitionist, a devout Christian, and a writer who published his self-titled David Walker's Appeal in 1829.W...

David Wilmot (1814-1868) was an American politician who sponsored a bill that promised to prohibit slavery in territory gained from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Wilmot, a Democrat until the...