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Invention of the Cotton Gin
The cotton gin is a machine designed to remove cotton from its seeds. The cotton gin made the cotton industry of the south explode, increasing the number of slaves needed to pick the cotton thereby strengthening the arguments for continuing slavery. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many southerners because it established the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners, on the other hand, condemned it for acquiescing in the expansion of slavery.Nevertheless, the act helped hold the Union together for more than thirty years. It was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which established popular sovereignty regarding slavery. -
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States. -
Free-Soil Party
Free-Soil party, in U.S. history, political party that came into existence in 1847–48 chiefly because of rising opposition to the extension of slavery into any of the territories newly acquired from Mexico. -
Compromise of 1850
The Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state. -
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland.Over the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, she led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could stay on their journey north to freedom. -
Fugitive Slave Act
This controversial law allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property. It 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. -
Bleeding Kansas
It was the violent hostilities between pro and antislavery forces in the Kansas territory during the mid and late 1850s. The tension was increasing. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
It created the Nebraska and Kansas territories. Repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Allowed settlers to determine if they wanted slavery or not. -
Dred scott v.Sandford
The Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford was issued on March 6, 1857. This opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. -
The Elecion of 1860
Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the president, but he did not receive a single electoral vote from the southern states. The people of southern states felt their property was threatened and decided to secede from the Union. -
The beginnig of the Civil War
The war began when Confederate warships bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.
