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First Slave Ship Arrival In North American English Colonies
First Africans landed James Town, Virginia.
Stolen from a Portuguese slave ship and transported on an English Warship.
20 Slaves were aboard this first shipment. -
Invention of the Cotton Gin
Was invented by Eli Whitney.
Was a contributing factor to outbreak of the American Civil War.
Its separated seeds from the cotton plant. -
Slave Trade Ban of 1803
United States Federal law stated no new slave were permitted into the US.
Legislation was promoted by Thomas Jefferson.
People still continued to smuggle slaves into the US. -
Missouri Compromise
An effort by Congress to defuse sectional and political rivalries.
Maintained balance of power between North and South.
Created Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
Founding of Liberia
Motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States.
A group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) .
The resulting state of Liberia would become the second (after Haiti) black republic in the world at that time. -
Abolitlon Movement
A social and political push for the immediate emancipation of all slaves.
Advocating for emancipation separated abolitionists from more moderate anti-slavery advocates.
Radical abolitionism was partly fueled by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening. -
Nat Turner Rebeliion
Slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia.
The rebellion was put down within a few days.
The rebellion was effectively suppressed at Belmont Plantation. -
Fugitive Slave Act
Part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.
Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law".
It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters. -
Compromise of 1850
Consists of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery.
U.S. Senate. Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South.
California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah. -
Underground Railroad
A network of secret routes and safe houses used by African-American slaves to escape into free states.
Various other routes led to Mexico or overseas.
Formed in the late 1700s but reached its height between 1850 and 1860. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
An anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".
Featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. -
"Bleeding Kansas"
Series of violent civil confrontations in the United States.
Emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and retributive murders carried out by pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" and anti-slavery "Free-Staters" in Kansas and neighboring Missouri. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders.
The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
In the pro-slavery South it was strongly supported. -
Brooks Attacks Sumner
Preston Brooks used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner.
The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery.
It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse"[1] that eventually led to the American Civil War. -
Dred Scott Case
The U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled that a slave who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby entitled to his freedom.
African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States.
Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The issues they discussed were not only of critical importance to the sectional conflict over slavery and states’ rights but also touched deeper questions that would continue to influence political discourse.
They were designed to achieve certain immediate political objectives.
Lincoln was running for Douglas’s Senate seat as a Republican. -
Raid on Harper's Ferry
Effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt.
Wanted to take over a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
Brown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. -
Election of 1860
Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell.
The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split.
In the months following Lincoln’s election seven Southern states, led by South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860, seceded. -
Civil War
Was a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people.
War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
The loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states.
The freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory. -
Thirteenth Amendment
It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
Selective enforcement of statutes continued to subject some black Americans to involuntary labor, particularly in the South. -
Abraham Lincoln Assassination
Was shot in the head by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln died the next morning.
The assassination occurred only days after the surrender at Appomattox Court House Of Gen. Robert E.Lee .
Lincoln’s death plunged much of the country into despair, and the search for Booth and his accomplices was the largest manhunt in American history to that date. -
Fourteenth Amendment
The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws.
The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy.
Formed basis for landmark decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges regarding same-sex marriage. -
Compromise of 1877
Unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election.
It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South.
Formally ended the Reconstruction Era. -
Racial Segregation
Separation of access to facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines.
Refers to the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from other races.
For example, in the United States Armed Forces before the 1950s, black units were typically separated from white units but were led by white officers. -
The Niagara Movement
The first significant black organized protest movement of the twentieth century, is launched in Buffalo, NY.
It is an attempt by a small yet articulate group of radicals to challenge Booker T. Washington's ideals of accommodation.
This militant group was led by W.E.B. DuBois and William M. Trotter. -
2nd Ku Klux Klan
Advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration and Nordicism.
The KKK used terrorism, both physical assault and murder.
Membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.
