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Invention of Cotton gin
The cotton gin is a machine that is used to pull cotton fibers from the cotton seed. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794 that caused a huge impact In the southern cotton industry. Click Here! -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. Click Here! -
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Tariff of 1828 & Nullification Crisis
In 1828, Congress passed a high protective tariff that infuriated the southern states because they felt it only benefited the industrialized North. This tariff benefited American producers of cloth — mostly in the north. But it shrunk English demand for southern raw cotton and increased the final cost of finished goods to American buyers. Click Here! -
The Liberator is Published
In 1831, Garrison published the first edition of The Liberator. In 1833, he met with delegates from around the nation to form the American Anti-Slavery Society.The Liberator would not have been successful had it not been for the free blacks who subscribed. Click Here! -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nathanial “Nat” Turner (1800-1831) was a black American slave who led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves and stiffened proslavery, antiabolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War (1861–65).Click Here! -
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Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War (1846-48). Click Here! -
Under Ground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives. Click Here! -
Compromise of 1850
Divisions over slavery in territory gained in the Mexican-American (1846-48). War were resolved in the Compromise of 1850. It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty. Click Here! -
Uncle Tom's Cabin is Published
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. While living in Cincinnati, Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad. Later, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. [Click Here!] -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that mandated “popular sovereignty”–allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders. Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas–Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the influential Lincoln-Douglas debates–the bill overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. Click Here! -
Dred Scott Decision
In 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, there by negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. Click Here! -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Historians have traditionally regarded the series of seven debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois state election campaign as among the most significant statements in American political history. Click here! -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. He would seize the arms and ammunition in the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. Click here! -
Election of 1860
The Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860 to select their candidate for President in the upcoming election. It was turmoil. Northern democrats felt that Stephen Douglas had the best chance to defeat the "Black Republicans." Click Here! -
Secession of Southern States
Secession, as it applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War, comprises the series of events that began on December 20, 1860, and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union. Click Here! -
Fort Sumter is fired upon
A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called the Star of the West arrived in Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back to sea. Click Here!
