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The Cotton Gin
The Cotton Gin patented in 1794 by U.S. inventer Eli Whitney. The Cotton Gin revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid- 19 century it was America leading export. His invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. -
The embargo act of 1807
The Embargo Act of 1807 was a law passed by the United State Congress and signed by President Thomas Jefferson on December 22, 1807, that prohibited American ships from trading in all foreign ports. Britain and France had been at war since 1803. Americans tried hard to remain neutral in this conflict and keep up communication and trade with both countries. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. In 1806, France passed a law that prohibited trade between neutral parties, like the U.S., and Britain. -
The Missouri Compromise
In 1819 Missouri requested admission to the Union as a slave state. It threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was negated by 1854 act -
The Tariff of Abominations
The Tariff of 1828, was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828 designed to protect industry in the northern United States. It was labeled the Tariff of Abominations by its southern detractors because of the effects it had on the Southern economy. The 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 tariff continues
The South, however, was harmed firstly by having to pay higher prices on goods the region did not produce, and secondly because reducing the importation of British goods made it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they imported from the South. The reaction in the South, particularly in South Carolina, would lead to the Nullification Crisis that began in late 1832. Southern oppentents felt that the tariffs were unconsitiutional because they favored one sector of the economy. -
Abolitionist Movement
By the early 1830s, those who wished to see that institution abolished within the United States were becoming more strident and influential. They claimed obedience to "higher law" over obedience to the Constitution’s guarantee that a fugitive from one state would be considered a fugitive in all states. The fugitive slave act along with the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped expand the support for abolishing slavery nationwide. -
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
In August of 1831, a slave named Nat Turner incited an uprising that spread through several plantations in southern Virginia. Turner and approximately seventy others killed around sixty white people.Virginia lawmakers reacted to the crisis by rolling back what few civil rights slaves and free black people possessed at the time. Education was prohibited and the right to assemble was severely limited. -
Nullification crisis
The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification.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. -
The Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War (1846-48). Soon after the war began, President James K. Polk sought the appropriation of $2 million as part of a bill to negotiate the terms of a treaty. Fearing the addition of a pro-slave territory, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot proposed his amendment to the bill. Although the measure was blocked in the southern-dominated Senate, it enflamed the growing controversy over slavery. -
The Compromise of 1850
Divisions over slavery in territory gained in the Mexican-American (1846-48). War were resolved in the Compromise of 1850. It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves. -
Uncle Tom cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly,is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
This act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It allowed residents of the new territories to decide whether or not to permit slavery, thus reversing the limits on slavery set by the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Proponents of the act thought it provided a peaceable means by which the slavery issue could be addressed in the new territories; however shortly after its passage pro and anti-slavery factions in Kansas fought violently for control. " -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of the state of Missouri between 1854 and 1861. The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 called for "popular sovereignty"—that is, the decision about slavery was to be made by the settlers (rather than outsiders). -
The Dredd Scott case
In March 1857, in one of the most controversial events preceding the American Civil War (1861-65), the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford. The case had been brought before the court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott argued that his time spent in these locations entitled him to emancipation. The court found that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship. -
John Brown raid
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt by the white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 20 men in his party, was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. -
The election of 1860
When the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1859 presidential election, Southern fears that the Republicans would abolish slavery reached a new peak. Lincoln was an avowed opponent of the expansion of slavery but said he would not interfere with it where it existed. -
South Carolina secedes from the union
Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union. Just as Springfield, Illinois celebrated the election of its favorite son to the Presidency on November 7, so did Charleston, South Carolina, which did not cast a single vote for him. It knew that the election meant the formation of a new nation. The Charleston Mercury said, "The tea has been thrown overboard, the revolution of 1860 has been initiated." -
Fort Sumter
On April 10, 1861, knowing that resupplies were on their way from the North to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, provisional Confederate forces in Charleston demanded the fort’s surrender. The fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused. On April 12, the Confederates opened fire with cannons. At 2:30 p.m. the following day, Major Anderson surrendered.
