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Invention of the Cotton Gin
The cotton gin is a machine designed to separate the seeds from the cotton harvested from the plant. The cotton gin made the cotton industry of the south explode. The processing cotton became much easier resulting in greater availability and cheaper cloth. However, the invention also lead to increase the number of slaves -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It was an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states. It also end the first of a series of crises concerning the extension of slavery. -
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. The text describes the events of his life and 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 of 1848
The Free Soil Party was an American political party that only survived through two presidential elections, in 1848 and 1852. They opposed to the extension of slavery into the territories. -
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." During a ten-year span she made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom, which made a big contribution to anti-slavery movement. -
Compromise of 1850
In 1849 California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate.The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws that dealt with the issue of slavery, which was an effort to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between North and South. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. -
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.It changed 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
Bleeding Kansas refers to the time between 1854-58 when the Kansas territory was the site of much violence over whether the territory would be free or slave. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery in the territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude. Opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act helped found the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery into the territories. -
Dred Scott v Sandford
This opinion declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. In addition, this decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. -
The Election of 1860
In the Presidential Election of 1860, the four candidates were Abraham Lincoln, John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas. Abraham Lincoln won the election, but the South was not content to this because Lincoln was not receive a single Electoral vote from South -
The Beginning of the Civil War
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War.
