There were originally 12 amendments to the Constitution, but the first 2 were never ratified. Amendments 3 through 12 then became the Bill of Rights. The structure and content of the Bill of Rights was influenced by the Virginia Declaration of Rights …

Although the Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal,” it did not deal with the difficult issue of slavery in the United States. The differences between the North and the South on slavery eventually led to the Civil War …

The Emancipation Proclamation stated that slaves in the Confederate states (the states that wanted to separate from the United States) were free, and that the Union military would fight to preserve that freedom. It applied only to states that were “in …

For more in-depth studying, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has created a Civics and Citizenship Toolkit , a collection of educational resources and information for immigrants to the United States. This toolkit contains settlement …

The Emancipation Proclamation invited former slaves to join the Union military. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 African-American soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union. One of the earliest and most important tasks for the U.S. Government …