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Beginning of Slave Trade in America
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia to aid in the production of crops as tobacco. African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. -
United States Constitution ratified witht the 3/5 clause
States would buy more and more slaves to increase the population. Since slaves were considered property, congress took this into consideration. They soon decided that each slave is counted as 3/5 of a person. -
Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
Fugitive Slave Law
On this day, Congress passes the first fugitive slave law, requiring all states, including those that forbid slavery, to forcibly return slaves who have escaped from other states to their original owners. The laws stated that "no person held to service of labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such labor or service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party...." -
"Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas is the term used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise's use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford court case
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permiting slavery in all of the country's territories. The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin bef -
Beginning of Civil War
The Republican party had run on an anti-slavery platform, and many southerners felt that there was no longer a place for them in the Union. The seceded states created the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi Senator, as their provisional president.
