-
Period: to
Events dealing with Slavery in The South
-
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was a piece of legislation proposed by David Wilmot towards the end of the Mexican-American War. If passed, the Proviso would have outlawed slavery in territory acquired by the United States as a result of the war, which included most of the Southwest and extended all the way to California. -
Harriet Tubman and The Underground RR
Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who has settled in the North, begins helping other slaves flee captivity. By the start of the Civil War, Tubman will have helped at least 300 slaves in gaining their freedom. -
The Compromise of 1850
The compromise prevented further territorial expansion of slavery while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which compelled Northerners to seize and return escaped slaves to the South. While the agreement succeeded in postponing hostilities between the North and South, it did little to address, and in some ways even reinforced, the structural imbalance that divided the United States. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional exploration of slave life was a cultural sensation. Northerners felt as if their eyes had been opened to the horrors of slavery, while Southerners protested that Stowe’s work was slanderous. -
Bleeding Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned parts of the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers in the two territories to determine whether or not to permit slavery by a popular vote. Pro- and anti-slavery agitators flocked to Kansas, hoping to shift the decision by sheer weight of numbers. The two factions struggled for five years with sporadic outbreaks of bloodshed that claimed fifty-six lives. -
Anthony Burns Uproar
Abolitionist Wendell Phillips and other antislavery advocates attack a federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts where Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, is held. Local residents make several unsuccessful attempts to rescue Burns, who is ultimately returned to his Virginia master. President Pierce orders Burns's return as an example to others that he will enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. -
Dred Scott vs. Sandford
The U.S. Supreme Court rules (7 to 2) in Dred Scott v. Sandford that slavery is protected by the Constitution, and that a ban on slavery in the territories is unconstitutional. -
Debate Over Kansas
President James Buchanan tries and fails to admit Kansas as a slave state. The Democratic Party begins to split over the issue of popular sovereignty and party leaders in Congress are in dispute over whether to allow the territorial legislature to adopt a proslavery constitution. The admission bill stalls in the House. -
John Brown's Raid
the crusading abolitionist organized a small band of white allies and free blacks and raided a government arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He hoped to seize weapons and distribute them to Southern slaves in order to spark a wracking series of slave uprisings. Although Brown captured the arsenal, he was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender by soldiers under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. He was tried for treason and was executed on December 2 1859. -
New Haven Address
Republican Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech in New Haven, Connecticut. "Wrong as we think Slavery is," he says, "we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States?"
