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Eli Whitney invents cotton gin
The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton a major industry and sharply increased the need for slave labor. -
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Sojourner Truth life
A freed black woman who fought tirelessy for womens rights and black emancipation. -
Gabriel slave rebellion in Virginia
Gabriel Prosser planned a large slave rebellion in the Richmond area in the summer of 1800. Information regarding the revolt was leaked prior to its execution, and he and twenty-five followers were taken captive and hanged in punishment. In reaction, Virginia and other state legislatures passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as prohibiting the education, assembly, and hiring out of slaves, to restrict their chances to learn and to plan similar rebel -
Louisiana purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,140,000 km2) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The Louisiana Purchase was by far the largest territorial gain in U.S. history, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. The purchase doubled the size of the United States. Before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Louisiana had been under control of the Spanish since 1763. -
Congress outlaws slave trade
Some Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective January 1, 1808. The widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South. -
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smuggling slaves
Because the price of "black ivory" (slaves) was so high, slaves were smuggled into the South despite the importation of African slaves into American ended in 1808. Most slaves were the offspring of slaves already in America -
American Colonization Society formed
Founded by Robert Finley, the society wanted to assist free black people in immigrating to Arica. Finley saw colonization as a charitable work, one that would benefit American blacks and Africans alike through the spreading of Christianity to Africa. He also thought that it would prompt a gradual end to slavery. -
Missouri Compromise
Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s
request to be a slave state but also admitting Maine as a free state. -
Republic of Liberia formed
Liberia was founded in 1822 as a result of the efforts of the American Colonization Society to settle freed American slaves in West Africa. The society contended that the emigration of blacks to Africa was an answer to the problem of slavery and the incompatibility of the races. -
Vesey slave rebellion in Charleston
Vesey was a literate and very intelligent black man who had purchased his freedom in January of 1800; he was the only free black to take part in the revolt. The revolt was planned to occur on an unknown date in May of 1822 near Charleston, South Carolina. -
Tariff of 1828
The major goal of the tariff was to protect industries in the northern United States which were being driven out of business by low-priced imported goods by putting a tax on them. The South, however, was harmed directly by having to pay higher prices on goods the region did not produce, and indirectly because reducing the exportation of British goods to the US made it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they imported from the South. -
Walker publishes "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World"
Wilmington native David Walker encouraged slaves to revolt against their masters. It was published in three installments in 1829—a time in which many white Southerners feared slave insurrections and two years before Nat Turner’s violent revolt in Virginia. -
Garrison begins publishing "The Liberator"
The Liberator was an abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831. Garrison published weekly issues of The Liberator from Boston continuously for 35 years, from January 1, 1831, to the final issue of January 1, 1866. -
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Virginia legislature debates slavery and emancipation
In the wake of Nat Turner's insurrection, only one southern state openly debated the possibility of ending slavery. These debates in the Virginia legislature in January and February 1832 ended with the defeat of proposals to abolish slavery. -
Nat Turner slave rebellion in Virginia
Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55 to 65 white people, the highest number of fatalities caused by any slave uprising in the South. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. -
Nullification crisis of 1832
This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of South Carolina. It further implanted haunting fears in white southern minds,
conjuring up nightmares of black incendiaries and
abolitionist devils. -
Bristish abolish slavery in the West Indies
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an 1833 Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire. This made the U.S. want to end slavery as well. -
American Anti-Slavery Society founded
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society and often spoke at its meetings as well. -
Abolitionist students expelled from Lane Theological Seminary
The Lane Rebels, a group of theology students, led by Theodore Dwight Weld, were expelled for abolitionist activity and later became leading preachers of the antislavery gospel. -
U.S. Post Office orders destruction of abolitionist mail
In 1835 a mob in Charleston, South Carolina, looted the post office and burned a pile of abolitionist propaganda; capitulating to southern pressures, the Washington government in 1835 ordered southern postmasters to destroy abolitionist material and called on southern state officials to arrest federal postmasters who did not comply -
"Broadcloth Mob" attacks Garrison
Because of his radical beliefs, William Lloyd Garrison was tied up by the "Broadcloth Mob" and dragged through out the streets of Boston. -
House of Representatives passed "Gag Resolution"
Legislation passed by the House of Representatives called for all appeals concerning slavery to be tabled without debate. -
Mob kills abolitionist Lovejoy
Lovejoy was murdered by pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials. -
Weld publishes "American Slavery As It Is"
Theodore Weld, his wife Angelina Grimke, and her sister Sarah Grimke compiled American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, which was published by the American Anti-slavery Society. It was designed to portray the horrors of American Slavery through a collection of first-hand testimonials and personal narratives from both freedmen and whites. -
Amistad
The Amistad, also known as United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad,was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839.The schooner was traveling along the coast of Cuba on its way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The African captives, who had been kidnapped in Sierra Leone and illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles and took over the ship. -
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Economy
Cotton accounted for half the value of all American exports after 1840. The South produced more than half of the entire world’s supply of cotton. -
Liberty party organized
The Liberty Party was a minor political party in the United States. The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) to advocate the view that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document. -
"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
A memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave, Frederick Douglass. -
Annexation of Texas
The United States of America annexed the Republic of Texas and admitted it to the Union as the 28th state. -
Wilmot Proviso
Would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession. -
Free Soil Party organized
Opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Fearful of expanding slave power within the national government, Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania in 1846 introduced into Congress his famous Wilmot Proviso, calling for the prohibition of slavery in the vast southwestern lands. -
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Underground Railroad
A network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
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Families in the south
In 1850 only 1,733 families owned more than 100 slaves each, and this select group provided the cream of the political and social leadership of the section and nation. -
The Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills passed in the United States in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War. -
"Uncle Toms Cabin"
An anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. -
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Bleeding Kansas
A eries of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of Missouri. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. -
Douglass burns the constitution
July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution as “a covenant with death and hell”. -
"he Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It"
Abook written by Hinton Rowan Helper of North Carolina, which he self-published in New York, 1857.[1] It was a strong attack on slavery as inefficient and a barrier to the economic advancement of whites -
Dred Scott vs. Stanford
It made two main rulings. The first ruling was that African Americans were not citizens, and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. The second ruling was that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in any territory acquired subsequent to the creation of the United States. -
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Immigration in the south
The Cotton Kingdom repelled large-scale European immigration, which added so richly to the manpower and wealth of the North; in 1860 only 4.4% of the southern population was foreign born, as compared with 18.7% for the North. -
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Free Blacks
The South’s free blacks numbered about 250,000 by 1860 -
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Slave investment
Planters regarded the slaves as investments, into which they had sunk nearly $2 billion of their capital by 1860. -
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Locations
By 1860 most slaves were concentrated in the “black belt” of the Deep South that stretched from SC and GA into the new southwest states of ALA, MI, and LA. -
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Southern born slaves
By 1860 virtually all southern slaves were no longer Africans, but native-born African-Americans, with their own distinctive history and culture -
Lincoln elected
Ws the 19th quadrennial presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860 and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. Lincoln won.
