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Cotton Gin
The cotton Gin was invented by Whitney in 1793. It was supposed to be a tool to revolutionize ethical slavery. This tool would separate the seeds from the cotton, which was thorny and labor intensive. The unintended consequence was the fact that with the cotton gin, slavery would become much more widespread. When the production of cotton went up, more and more slaves were needed to pick cotton for this demand. This would cause slavery, which was starting to fizzle out, to explode in popularity. -
Abolition movement
The abolitionist movement started out as whites who proposed sending blacks back to Africa to stop the divide in the North and South. This early movement would later turn into the Anti-Slavery society. Free blacks, enlightened whites, and northerners would unite to stop slavery in the south. These Anti-Slavery abolitionists worked to petition for the freedom of slaves and would debate and fight to free them. These group of people would fight in the Civil War -
Pennsylvania Vs. Priggs
This was a court case that ruled that the Fugitive slave act of Pennsylvania, which stopped free whites of the United States, to hide blacks. The precedent set was that federal law came before state law when it came to fugitive states. This allowed slave owners to retrieve runaway slaves, no matter where they went. -
Kansas-Nebraska act
When people started moving outwards to Kansas and Nebraska, the issue of slave vs free state came to be. It was decided that popular sovereignty was how these states would be decided as free or slave. Southerners and Northerners started to flee to those states to vote. This would lead into bleeding Kansas, where the North and Southerners would kill each other. -
Panic of 1857
Northern backs made risky investments in the South and started to lose money. The North is directly affected by the banks. The South was relatively unaffected by the collapse of these banks. The North believes that the fighting in the South and West caused these collapses. The South used these collapses to argue that farming was better, and that they were able to survive this panic through farming and slavery. -
Abraham Lincoln Wins election
Abraham Lincoln is nominated as president by a slim majority. The South is greatly displeased as he is strictly anti-Slavery. The Crittenden Compromise was made as a latch ditch effort to stop tensions after Lincoln was nominated. It stated state rights for the ownership of slaves and was a final plea to sanity. It fails and the South secedes after Lincolns election. -
Fort Sumter
The United States has troops stationed at Fort Sumter in the South. The North refused to remove these soldiers and move them back to the North. The South proceeds to attack the fort and overtake it. The South allows them to flee to the North with minimal damage to the troops. Lincoln sees this as a declaration of war. The Civil War has now begun.