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10 Events for the Civil War
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Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was centered around the issue of slavery westward expansion. In 1819, residents of the Missouri Territory petitioned Congress for admission to the Union with a constitution permitting slavery. Missouri's admission to the Union would give the slaveholding states a two-voting majority in the Senate. It would also thrust slavery westward and northward. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory, except within the boundaries of Missouri. -
Nat Turner's Slave Insurrection
Nat Turner, and enslaved American, led a band of rebels from farm to farm in Southampton County, Virginia, on the morning of August 22, 1831. In 48 hours, Turner and his rebels slaughtered 60 whites of both sexes and ages. In retaliation, whites killed slaves at random all over the region, totaling some 200 African American men. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills passed to reach a decision regarding the territories gained during the Mexican-American War. California became a free state, New Mexico and Utah were organized on basis of popular sovereignty, the fugitive slave law was strengthened, and the slave trade was abolished in D.C. Stephen Douglas passed the five proposals without convincing the North and South to agree on fundamental differences. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, depicting the inhumane reality of slavery and its evil effects on slaveholders, criticized northern racism and complicitly with slavery. More than 300,000 copies were sold in the first nine months of its publication, and by mid-1953, that number increased to over 1 million. In response, 15-20 proslavery novels were published in the 1850s, defending their system as more humane than wage labor. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act created Kansas and Nebraska territories, and exposed conflicting interpretations of popular sovereignty. The availability of millions of acres caused pro- and anti-slavery cohorts fled to Kansas and Nebraska, with the hopes of using popular sovereignty to their advantage. It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1850. -
Bleeding Kansas
During elections for a territorial legislature in 1855, thousands of pro-slavery Missourians invaded the polls and ran up a fraudulent majority for pro-slavery candidates, by murdering and intimidating free state settlers. In May, a pro-slavery group was sent to arrest Free Soil members, and sacked Lawrence, Kansas, killing several people and destroying property. John Brown, a radical abolitionist with a band of followers, murdered five proslavery settlers living along Pottawatomie Creek. -
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown led an armed rebellion through Harper's Ferry on the philosophy of "an eye for an eye," and that the destruction of slavery in America required revolutionary ideology and revolutionary acts. On October 16, Brown led a band of 18 whites and blacks in an attack on the federal arsenal, hoping to trigger a slave rebellion. The attack was unsuccessful, and Brown was executed in December in Charles Town, Virginia. Brown became an imfamous martyr and a villain in American history. -
Election of 1860
The Democratic Party, divided on the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners, broke into northern and southern sections. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican, collected the majority of electoral votes, only polled 40% of the popluar vote, and was not on the ballot in 10 slave states. Lincoln was opposed to slavery's westward expansion, and it was the first election where losers refused to accept the result. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states declared their secession. -
The First Battle of Fort Sumter
When the Fort Sumter was resupplied on April 12th, Confederate troops began shelling it from the mainland. The bombardment lasted for 34 hours striaght, until the Union soldiers surrendered. Surprisingly, no soldiers on either side were killed by enemy fire. -
Attack of Fort Sumter
Lincoln sought to hold onto forts in the states that had left the Union, reasoning that in this way he could assert federal sovereignty while waiting for restoration. On April 12, 1861, Lincoln sent a ship to the garrison to resupply its food reserves. Confederate batteries opened fire on the unwelcome ship, taking the garrison by force during the 24 hour siege. These shots started the American Civil War.
