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First Issue of Libeator
William Llyod Garrison published The Liberator. Garrison saw moral persuasion as the only means to end slavery. -
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. Proposed by Henry Clay. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin published
Harriet Beecher Stowe's best known novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property. -
Kansas- Nebraska Act
he Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress. Proposed by Stephan A. Douglas. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise. -
Dread Scott Decision
Dred Scott was a slave whose owner, an army doctor, had spent time in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free territory at the time of Scott’s residence. The Supreme Court was stacked in favor of the slave states. -
James Buchanan sworn into office as 15th President
Buchanan decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging the admission of the territory as a slave state -
John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia -
Abe Lincoln elected President
Just over two months after he was elected, President Lincoln saw the first state to succeed when South Carolina voted to secede on December 20th 1860. -
South Carolina secedes from the Union
South Carolina was a source of troops for the Confederate army, and as the war progressed, also for the Union, as thousands of ex-slaves flocked to join the Union forces. -
Battle at Fort Sumter begins
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. -
Battle of Bull Run
This was the first major land battle of the armies in Virginia. General Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run beyond Centreville. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln first proposed the idea of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in the summer of 1862 as a war measure to cripple the Confederacy. Lincoln surmised that if the slaves in the Southern states were freed, then the Confederacy could no longer use them as laborers to support the army in the field. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the largest battle of the American Civil War as well as the largest battle ever fought in North America, involving around 85,000 men in the Union's Army of the Potomac under Major General George. -
Sherman's March to the Sea
Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. -
The Surrender at Appomattox Court House
Harried mercilessly by Federal troops and continually cut off from turning south, Lee headed west, eventually arriving in Appomattox County on April 8. -
Lincoln's Assasination
John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
