-
Cotton Gin
This innovative machine made picking cotton much more efficient and helped justify the widespread slavery throughout the South, much to the discontent of the North. -
Embargo Act
This act prohibited all international trade through American ports after a conflict with France and Great Britain. -
Missouri Compromise
In order to diffuse tension between the North and South, Congress created a compromise that resulted in Missouri becoming a slave state, Maine a free state, and a boundary between slave and state regions. -
Tariff of Abominations
This tariff increased the tax on imported, manufactured goods, which benefited the North and hurt the South. -
Compromise of 1850
This compromise was created to once again quell the conflict between the North and South by making California a free state but allowing New Mexico and Utah's slave laws to be decided by their people. This attempt was in vain; while slave trade was prohibited in Washington, D.C., the Fugitive Slave Act allowed southerners to retrieve runaway slaves from free states. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
This book was incredibly influential in swaying public opinion on slavery. It showed horrifying details of slavery previously unknown to most and was a driving force in the abolitionist movement. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
While most of these events were created to diminish conflict, this bill put an even larger wedge between pro-slavery South and anti-slavery North. It allowed settlers to decide whether Kansas and Nebraska should be slave or free states, violating the Missouri Compromise. -
Bleeding Kansas
This event was the violent backlash of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which overturned the Missouri Compromise's boundary between free and slave territory. Small armies of both slavery supporters and abolitionists battled for approximately six years. -
Dred Scott Case
A Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his master in a free state, argued in court that this allowed him to be emancipated. When his request was denied under the reasoning that black people were unable to go to court as they were not citizens, tensions between the North and South skyrocketed. -
John Brown's Raid
This attempted slave rebellion, while unsuccessful, inspired the North and disgusted the South, making the separation even more prominent. -
Election of 1860
Arguably one of the most important factors of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's political win was met with rage throughout the South. This anger would ultimately lead to the South's secession. -
The South secedes from the Union
South Carolina was the first state to decide its secession, but others such as Georgia, Florida, and Alabama soon followed. This separation led almost immediately to opening fire in 1861.