Nation divided Timeline

  • Missouri Compromise

    Missouri Compromise
    admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state
  • Nat Turner's Rebellion

    a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County
  • Period: to

    Gag Rule

    prevented consideration of an antislavery proposal by Adams
  • Wilmot Proviso

     Wilmot Proviso
    unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War
  • Harreit Tubman escapes slavery

    Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped their Maryland plantation
  • Compromise of 1850

    Compromise of 1850
    the agreements made in order to admit California into the Union as a state without slavery. These agreements included allowing the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide whether to allow slavery
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin published

    Life Among the Lowly, novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

    Kansas-Nebraska Act
    repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote.
  • Period: to

    Bleeding Kansas

    Describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas.
  • Dred Scott Decision

    Dred Scott Decision
    A Supreme Court decision in 1857 that held that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional
  • Lincoln-Douglas Debates

    The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln
  • Period: to

    John Brown raids Harpers Ferry

    John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown
  • Abraham Lincoln elected

    Abraham Lincoln elected
    United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election