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Nat Turner's Rebellion
Ending around August 23rd, 1831, slave Nat Turner started an uprising in southern Virginia plantations in which seventy killed around sixty white people. Militia stopped the rebellion as fifty-five faced executions. Another two-hundred were lynched. Lawmakers in Virginia prohibited any education among black people limited the right to assemble together. What helped make this the bloodiest battle is the instance that the Union argued a limit to education undermines basic rights under slavery. -
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Conflicts Before the Civil War
What conflicts led up to the beginning of the Civil War? Let's talk about it. ---- By David Marlow -
1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation
Until November 28th, 1842, twenty-five enslaved people attempted to escape to Mexico, where slavery was abolished, from Indian Territory which is now Oklahoma. Vann plantation fugitives and those near Webbers Falls burglarized a store, took horses and mules, and took rifles before being caught by Cherokee officials. Fugitive slave hunters were killed as strategy. The Cherokee Nation's new required expulsion of free slaves angered the North as areas in the South leaned toward labor force/profits. -
The Wilmot Proviso
Ohio Democrat Thomas Morris warned that slavery may govern the country and its implied laws. Congressman David Wilmot proposed a ban on slavery in territories gained from the end of the Mexican-American War. It would've included most of the Southwest and California without its failure. However, the debate impending debate prompted the first serious discussions of secession. John C. Calhoun made the point "[America] is a government of the white man," where anyone but the Caucasian is gone. -
The Compromise of 1850
President Millard Fillmore, elected in 1850, helped Whig leaders Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in establishing the compromise which included a slave act giving slave catchers federal support and organized Mexican lands as territories with slavery undetermined. The South still believed in “no Union without slavery” as they threatened secession preserving rights. Many delegates were loyal to the Union on the terms of protecting slavery and ratifying proslavery constitutions for new territories. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Selling around 300,000 copies in one year, Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired to write the volumes by the comfort the enslaved gave after her mother's death; her young, 18-month-old son's death of cholera; and the Fugitive Slave Law, which favored commissioned returns to slavery. Arguments against slavery brought large audiences, though there were stereotypes, resulting in stronger opinions throughout abolitionism; the North saw horrifying slavery while the South thought Stowe's work was evil. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
"...so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" says Chief Justice Roger Taney. Dred Scott, a Virginian, sued for his freedom in the Supreme Court. There, he was deemed nothing else than property given for a human being. He had no rights. Overall, this decision of classifying slaves as property made government authority more ambiguous and threatened to the possibility of Civil War. A reversal of a winning court case for Scott the inability of suing court. -
Bleeding Kansas
Until 1861, the Kansas-Nebraska Act put together “Bleeding Kansas,” in which popular sovereignty determined the popular referendum which classified free and slave states. Northern and Southern settlers flooded the area to overwhelm numbers, causing violence like John Brown’s before President Buchanan proposed the Lecompton Constitution to calm violence. The Democratic Party was going through a crisis by the time violence subsided between the North and South, but relations were still fragile. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Extending until October 15th, these slavery debates lifted Lincoln to his nomination for president in 1860, which scared Southerners but supported Northerners due to his positive abolitionism views. The seven roundtrip debates in question consisted of hour-long opening statements, an hour-and-a-half long arguments, and half-hour long rebuttals, threatening Senator Stephen Douglas' position although he won. One prime argument by Lincoln was that Douglas supported the ruling of Dred Scott's case. -
John Brown's Raid
Lasting until October 18th, 1859, abolitionist John and his nineteen supporters raided a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, attempting to capture the arms and distribute them among local slaves for an insurrection, armed. With there being casualties on both sides - seven people killed, ten people wounded, there's an increased tension to an example of a civil war's outcome, resulting in abolitionists disliking Confederate Colonel Robert E. Lee for convicting and hanging Brown for treason. -
The Battle of Fort Sumter
Lasting until April 14th, 1861, this battle marked the beginning of the Civil War. The Confederacy exhausted and outnumbered the Union as Major Robert Anderson surrendered, and both sides called volunteers for Bull Run. It was a first call to action on failed compromises of expanded slavery as President Abraham Lincoln prompted South Carolina to secede from the United States with six other states following. Also prompted was the Confederate militia seizing United States forts and property.