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William Lloyd Garrison launches The Liberator
The Liberator denounced the Compromise of 1850, condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, damned the Dred Scott decision and hailed John Brown’s raid as “God’s method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant.” -
Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia
Nat Turner’s rebellion was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history and led to a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves. -
American Anti-Slavery founded in Boston
This society was founded with a plan to reach mass audiences through lecturing, petition drives, and a wide variety of printed materials. -
Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women
The letters were infuential and defended the rights of women to speak in public in defense of a moral cause. -
Henry Highland Garnet's "Address to the Slaves of the United States of America"
In his speech, he calls the listeners to open rebellion; the speech failed by one vote being endorsed by the convention. -
Frederick Douglass published the North Star
He titled his newpaper the North Star because when slaves escaped at night, they would follow the North Star in the sky to freedom. -
Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York
This was the first every women's rights convention held in the United States, resulting in the Ninth resolution, which marked the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in America. -
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery
Tubman escaped slavery and became a leading abolitionist, helping hundreds of enslaved African Americans gai their freedom through the Underground Railroad. -
Fugitive Slave Act passed
This newly revised slave act forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves, while also denied slaves the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1000 and six months in jail. -
Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" speech
Truth's speech was a powerful rebuke to many antifeminist arguments of the day, while it continues to serve, as a classic expression of women’s rights. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
The novel demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement, and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. -
Republican Party founded
A few years after the Whig party disassembled, anti-slavery Whigs began meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party, and in their first presidential candidate won 11 of the 16 Northern states. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act passed
This act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory -
Civil War in Kansas known as "Bleeding Kansas"
Bleeding Kansas was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements in Kansas. -
Charles Sumner beating
A member of the House of Representatives entered the Senate chamber and savagely beat Sumner into unconsciousness. -
Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision
The decision made in the Dred Scott case affirmed the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, overgoing the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
Lecompton Constitution rejected by Congress
The constitution allowed Kansas to be admitted into the union as a slave state, resulting in a citizens vote of 6,226 for slavery and the Lecompton Constitution and 569 against slavery and the Lecompton Constitution. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The debates were a series of formal political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, in a campaign for one of Illinois' two United States Senate seats, which resulted in Lincoln losing the election. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
Brown hoped that the local slave population would help him and his men capture prominent citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. -
Election of 1860
Lincoln won the election, and a few weeks after the election, South Carolina seceded from the Union.
