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Missouri Compromise
Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine was admitted as a free state, preserving the balance between slave and free states. A line was also drawn through the unincorporated western territories along the 36/30 parallel, dividing north and south and labeling them as free or slave states. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner, a slave, incited an uprising that spread through plantations in southern Virginia. Turner and seventy followers killed 60 white people. Fifty-five slaves, were tried and executed for their roles and nearly two hundred more were executed by mobs. Nat Turner’s rebellion was by far the bloodiest. Virginia lawmakers reacted by rolling back what few civil rights slaves and free blacks possessed at the time. Education was prohibited. -
Uncle Toms Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second-best-selling book in America, second only to the Bible. Its popularity brought slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of conflict. The publication of this book only made disputes between the North and South more intense. Lincoln famously said, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." -
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Bleeding Kansas
The heart of this conflict was the question of whether Kansas would allow slavery, and enter the Union as a slave state or a free state.
Pro and anti-slavery agitators flocked to Kansas, hoping to shift the decision. The two factions struggled for five years with outbreaks of chaos that ended in fifty-six casualties. Although both territories eventually ratified anti-slavery constitutions, the violence shocked and troubled the nation. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott, a Virginian slave, tried to sue for his freedom. This case eventually rose to the Supreme Court where the justices found that, as a slave, he was a piece of property, with no real rights as a human.
The Dred Scott Decision threatened the political landscape that had managed to prevent civil war. The classification of slaves as property not only angered slaves and abolitionists, but made the federal government’s authority to regulate the institution more debatable. -
Lincoln's election
Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, despite not being included on many Southern ballots. As a Republican, his party’s anti-slavery views struck fear onto many Southerners.
In December 1860, a little over a month after the polls closed, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Six more states followed. Lincoln was the first republican to become president. -
The battle of Fort Sumter
Lincoln notified the Governor of South Carolina, that he was sending supply ships, South Carolina than demanded that the U.S. Army abandon the forts in Charleston Harbor. Since they did not comply the Confederate States Army bombarded Fort Sumter, and although the United States Army returned gunfire, they were outnumbered and surrendered.
Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee dissolved their ties to the federal government after denying to help Lincolns army.
