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The Nullification Crisis
It was a sectional crisis when Andrew Jackson was president, 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 Abolition Movement
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery, whether formal or informal.In western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historical movement to end the African slave trade and set slaves free.In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement revived to campaign against the institution of slavery. In 1823 the first Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Britain. -
Frederick Douglass and the North Star
Frederick Douglas was a 23 year old black slave, who became known by giving speeches about his slave life. He became the leading spokes person for the abolition of Slavery and Racial equality.He also helped slaves escape to the North while working with the Underground Railroad.The North Star was a newspaper Douglas had established,which developed it into the most influential black antislavery paper published.It was used to denounce slaveryand fight for the emancipation of women and other groups. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills, 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 .The Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked specific provisions. -
The Kansas/Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty
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.The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas refers to when the Kansas territory was the site of much violence over whether the territory would be free or slave.Several constitutions for the future state of Kansas were created, some pro- and some anti-slavery. The Lecompton Constitution was the most important pro-slavery Constitution. -
The Dred Scott decision
The Dred Scott decision had the effect of widening the political and social gap between North and South and took the nation closer to the brink of Civil War. Scott was helped by Abolitionist (anti-slavery) lawyers to sue for his freedom in court, claiming he should be free since he had lived on free soil for a long time. -
The Election of Abraham Lincoln
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 is commonly viewed as the beginning of a chain of events that erupted into civil war in April 1861. Lincoln was the first member of the Republican Party elected to the presidency, a remarkable rise for a political party that had been in existence less than ten years. -
South Carolina secession
Southern Secession began with the secession of South Carolina from the Union. The illustration to your right presents an image of the seceding South Carolina Congressional delegation. The image was created by noted artist Winslow Homer from a Mathew Brady photograph. The illustration appeared in the December 22, 1860 edition of Harper's Weekly. -
Formation of the Confederate States of America
was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern slave states that had declared their secession from the United States. Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution was a compact among states, an agreement which each state could abandon without consultation. The U.S. government (the Union) rejected secession as illegal. Following a Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, a federal fort in the Confederate state of South Carolina.
