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Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia
Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55 to 65 people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the American South. -
William Lloyd Garrison launches The Liberator
The Liberator was Garrison's most prominent abolitionist activity. -
Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women
Letters to newspapers protesting slavery from a woman's point of view -
Henry Highland Garnet's "Address to the Slaves of the United State of America"
Henry Highland Garnet captured most of the attention of the delegates with his “An Address to the Slaves of the United States” in which he called for their open rebellion. The speech failed by one vote of being endorsed by the convention. -
Fredrick Douglass published The North Star
Frederick Douglass--Abolitionist Leader. After Douglass escaped, he wanted to promote freedom for all slaves. He published a newspaper in Rochester, New York, called The North Star. It got its name because slaves escaping at night followed the North Star in the sky to freedom. -
Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York
At the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., a woman's rights convention–the first ever held in the United States–convenes with almost 200 women in attendance. -
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery
Harriet Tubman became a leading abolishionist before the American Civil war. -
Fugitive Slave Act passed
In this compromise, the antislavery advocates gained the admission of California as a free state, and the prohibition of slave-trading in the District of Columbia. -
Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech
This short, simple speech was a powerful rebuke to many antifeminist arguments of the day. It became, and continues to serve, as a classic expression of womens rights. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. -
Republican party founded
he Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act passed
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders -
Charles SUmner beating
Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with a cane. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called "The Crime Against Kansas." -
Supreme Court's Dred Scott decicion
led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting slavery in all of the country's territories. -
Lecompton Constitiution rejected by Congress
The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. -
ELection of 1860
Served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. -
Civil war in Kansas known s "Bleeding Kansas"
Most Kansans strongly favored the cause of the Union.
