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Invention of the Cotton Gin
Learn more here! Eli Whitney created a machine that helped the history of the United States. He invented a cotton gin that was popular in the South. The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney’s cotton gin was able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls. -
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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of people who helped slaves escape to the North and to Canada. It consisted of many people many whites but mostly black. It effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year. The South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850. -
Missouri Compromise
Learn more facts The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was an effort by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to keep together an equal balance of power between the slave held states and free states. The slave held states feared that if they became outvoted in Congressional representation that they would not have as much power to protect their interests in property and trade. -
Tariff of 1828 & Nullification Crisis
The Tariff of 1828 passed the house of representatives. The tariff sought to protect northern and western products from competition with foreign imports. The resulting tax on goods would higher the cost of living in the South and would cut into the profits of New England's industrialists. -
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The Liberator is published
The Liberator took 35 years. It was published in Boston.The Liberator represented the majority opinion of Northerners, reacted militantly by defending slavery as a “positive good”. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Leeearn more Nat Turner’s rebellion was one of the biggest slave rebellions ever to take place, and it played an imperative role on slave society. Nat Turner’s Rebellion roamed the country slaying white men, women, and children. He showed slave owners how vulnerable they were. Whites in the South were determined to prevent any slave insurrections, and they tightened the already awful slave codes to keep African Americans free. -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was an amendment to gain funding for the Mexican-American War. The Wilmot Proviso was introduced by David Wilmot saying that slavery should be banned in the territories acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso opened the issue of slavery to public debate. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to smooth out the debate between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North. The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to be admitted as a free state and the admission of New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory with slavery was left to to the decision of the people in relation to Popular Sovereignty on Slavery. -
Uncle Tom's cabin is published
learn more here!Uncle toms cabin discusses the slavery that was a major cause of the civil war.. The novel was written in 1852 by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. There are characters in the book that discuss their story. -
Bleeding Kansas
For many years the Great Plains area was labeled the Great American Desert. It was little economic value to it. The federal government relocated a number of Native American tribes to the Plains as further testimony to the area’s lack of appeal to white settlers -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was letting settlers in those areas to decide for themselves if slavery in their territories was alright. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was used to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820. As the North of the U.S. was anti-slavery and held the Missouri Compromise to be a valid and long-term agreement. The South was inclined to be pro-slavery and so the Act met with nothing but approval there. -
Election of 1860
The election of 1860 basically led for the American Civil War. America had been split through most of the 1850s on thoughts of states' rights and slavery in those areas. In 1860, this problem came to a tension. This sent the Democratic Party into Southern and Northern factions and brought Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to power without the support of a Southern state.
