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Invetion of the cotton gin
Eli Whitney patented the Cotton Gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of the cotton.His offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. -
Missouri Compromise
Tension began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise grating Missouri's request but also admitting Maine as a free State. -
Free-Soil Party
The free-soil party developed in part from a political rivality in New York State. The democraric party there consisted of contending factions: the Barnburners, who were strongly opposed to slavary, and the Hunkers, who were neutral or supportive of slavery.The Free-soil Party promised "free candidate, free speech, free labor and free men". Thei main goil was to keep slavery out of the Western territories. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrotation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive slave acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves within the terretory of the U.S.
Part of Henry Clay's famed Compromise of 1850, a group of bills that helped quiet early calls for Southern Secession, this new law forcibly compelled citizens to assis in the capture of runaway slaves. It also denied slaves the right to a jury trial nd increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1000 and 6 months in jail. -
Kankas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. 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 of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
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 "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of the state of Missouri between 1854 and 1861 -
Dres Scott vs Sandford
Dred Scott v. Sandford, was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. -
The election of 1860
The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South. -
The beginning of the Civil War
The Civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Among the 34 states as of January 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, known as the "Confederacy" or the "South".
