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Nat Turner's Revolt
Nat Turner was a slave in Virginia who staged a bloody rebellion. With the rising tensions surrounding slavery, he had a religious vision telling him to "fight against the serpent". Hoping to gain a following, he and a group of friends killed 55 white men, women, and children. The white militia quickly put a stop to this and in he end Nat Turner only caused the toughening of slave codes, limited black movement, and prohibition of any slaves from learning to read in the south. -
American Anti-Slavery Society
A very determined abolitionist during this time was William Lloyd Garrison. He published a weekly newspaper called "The Liberator" that fought for immediate abolition of slavery. Garrison then established the American Anti-Slavery Society with 60 other religious abolitionists. The society continued publishing "The Liberator" until 1865 and also wrote literature that used the Bible to discredit slavery. The society was able to raise a new found concern for the treatment of slaves in the U.S. -
The Underground Railroad
The American Anti-Slavery Society wanted to aid fugitive slaves in escaping to free states. They created a network of whites and free blacks in the south called the Underground Railroad. Many runaway slaves returned countless times to the south to help others escape. The Railroad allowed about one thousand African Americans to reach freedom in the North each year. -
The Gag Rule
During the chaos of racial fears and hatred, President Andrew Jackson asked congress to restrict the abolitionist groups use of mail. Although congress refused to do this, it brought politicians into the conflict. The House of Representatives enforced the "gag rule", which allowed the House to table all anti-slavery petitions. This kept the issue of slavery out of congress until 1844. -
Free Soil Movement
The senate rejected the Wilmot Proviso, that would have banned slavery in any territories gained from the war with Mexico. In response, thousands of ordinary northerners joined the cause and depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism. This group gained quite the following to argue that free men on new free soil was morally right. This led to the idea of squatter sovereignty, which would allow settlers in each territory to determine it's status as a free state or slave state. -
Domestic Slave Trade
By 1810, there was a surplus of enslaved workers on plantations because of natural increase. This caused a mania for the buying and selling of slaves. Slave owners would rip African Americans from their communities and bring them to work in the Deep South. At this time, they were movable personal property of the whites who owned them. While the slave trade fueled the southern economy, the domestic slave trade enraged many northern abolitionists. -
The Compromise of 1850
In order to please both the northern states and the southern states, 5 separate laws known as the compromise of 1850 were passed. It included a new Fugitive Slave Act that gave federal support to slave catchers, admitted California as a free state, resolved boundary disputes between New Mexico and Texas, and abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The compromise also ultimately left the issue of slavery in the hands of the people who lived there and enforced popular sovereignty. -
The Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850. Abolitionists in the North and the Midwest disagreed with the Act and instead helped Fugitive slaves escape capture. In 1851 twenty African Americans exchanged gunfire with Maryland slave catchers and killed 2 of them. Hostility towards this law kept growing, and eventually legislators in the North passed personal-liberty laws to give fugitives the right to trial, and argued that the act was unconstitutional. -
Dred Scott
In 1857, the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford brought up the controversial issue of Congress's constitutional authority over slavery. Dred Scott was a slave who argued that because he lived in a free state and free territory, he too should be free. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court declared that whether enslaved or free, African Americans could not be citizens of the U.S. and were property, having no right suing in the federal court. He said Congress didn't have the power to prohibit slavery. -
The Election of 1860
When Abraham Lincoln was elected as president, secession threats swept through the Deep South. South Carolina was first to secede, and the rest of the lower south was quick to follow in their footsteps. President Lincoln made seccesion illegal and was clear that he would use military force in order to preserve the union. This soon led to the South's decision to open fire at Fort Sumter, and begin the civil war instead of returning to the union.
