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Stono Rebellion
One September morning, 20 slaves broke into a store, stole weapons and supplies and headed for the refuge of Spanish-ruled Florida, leaving 23 murder victims in their path. Growing into a group of 100 upon arriving in Florida, the rebels stopped in an open field and made a ruckus in hopes other slaves would hear them and join. A local militia confronted the group, with most of the escaped slaves caught and executed. This was one of the first slave rebellions and it was considered the bloodiest. -
Missouri compromise
Congress wanted a policy to guide slavery in the U.S. Ultimately, Congress reached a series of agreements that became known as the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri compromise basically kept the amount of slave states even with the amount of free states. Missouri was a slave state and Maine was admitted as a free state, preserving the Congressional balance. A line was also drawn through the western territories along the 36°30' parallel, dividing north and south as free and slave. -
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes established in the United States during the mid 19th century and it was used by runaway slaves to escape to Canada. If a conductor was caught helping free slaves they would be fined, imprisoned, or even hanged. This was started by Harriet Tubman. She and other abolitionists helped between 40,000 -100,000 people escape from their masters. The first reporting of someone using it was an 1831 but it has been around since the 1700s -
Nat Turners 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 cohorts 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. -
Wilmot proviso
The wilmot proviso if agreed on would have outlawed slavery in all the states acquired from Mexico. After the Mexican American war, Mexico agreed to give the U.S land that was California and most of the Southwest. Wilmot spent two years fighting for his plan. He offered it as a rider on existing bills, introduced it to Congress on its own, and even tried to attach it to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. All attempts failed. -
The compromise of 1850
Senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas came up with the compromise of 1850. The compromise admitted California as a free state and did not regulate slavery in the remainder of the Mexican cession all while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which compelled Northerners to seize and return escaped slaves to the South. This in some ways was worse for the U.S because it reinforced the structural disparity in the dividing of the U.S. -
Bleeding Kansas
In 1854, the government passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowing the residents of Kansas to vote on whether they would be a slave state or a free state. The region was flooded with supporters from both sides. They fought over the issue for years. Several people were killed in small skirmishes giving the confrontation the name Bleeding Kansas. Eventually Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861. -
Dred Scott vs Sanford
Dred Scott was a Virginia slave who tried to sue for his freedom in court. The case eventually rose to the level of the Supreme Court, where the justices found that, as a slave, Dred Scott was a piece of property that had none of the legal rights or recognitions afforded to a human being The Dred Scott decision threatened to entirely change the political landscape that has prevented the civil war. -
John Brown raid
In October of 1959 he and 19 men led a raid on the federal armory at harpers ferry Virginia in an effort to capture the arms there and distribute them among slaves. A small force of U.S. Marines, led by Col. Robert E. Lee, put down the uprising. There were casualties on both sides; seven people were killed and at least 10 more were injured before Brown and seven of his remaining men were captured. On October 27, Brown was tried for treason against the state of Virginia, convicted and hanged. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
On April 12, 1861, Confederate warships turned back the supply convoy to Fort Sumter and opened a 34-hour bombardment on the stronghold. The garrison surrendered on April 14. The Civil War was now underway. On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to join the Northern army. Unwilling to contribute troops, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee dissolved their ties to the federal government.
