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Period: to
Civil war period
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Invention of the cotton gin
The significance of the cotton gin led to the growth of more slaves. The more slaves, more money. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. As large plantations spread into the Southwest, the price of slaves and land inhibited the growth of cities and industries. In 1790, Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 180. The effect was that cotton was king and the US produced enormus amounts of it. -
Missouri Comprimise of 1820
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a agreement by congress that extended slavery in the US for another 30 years. This law prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. The northern part of Massachusetts became Maine and was admitted to the Union as a free state. Three years later, the Missouri Compromise was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision. -
Underground Railroad
Led by Harriet Tubman, she was reffered to as "The Conductor". The Underground Railroad provided stories of guided escapes from the South, rescues of arrested fugitives in the North. The underground railroad provided an opportunity for sympathetic white Americans to play a role in resisting slavery. The effect of the railroad was that around 40,000 to 100,000 slaves were free. -
WIlmot Proviso
On August 8, 1846, Wilmot proposed in the House that boldly declared, "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist" in the land won in the Mexican-American War. The arguments for and against slavery were debated in the churches and in the newspapers. The significance was it inflamed sectional tensions and helped cause the American Civil War. -
Comprimise of 1850
The United States had recently got a lot of land, the result of its war with Mexico. The land was debated whether it would be a free or slave state. According to the compromise, Texas would get he land in dispute but be given 10 million dollars which is money it would use to pay off its debt to Mexico. The effect was the territories of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah would be organized without mention of slavery. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She wasnt abolitionist, had strong anti-slavery feelings. She had grown up in an abolitionist household and had harbored fugitive slaves. By the end of the first year, 300,000 copies had been sold in America alone; in England 200,000 copies were sold. The effect was that more and more abolishionist grew. -
Caning of Charles Sumner
The Senate wasnt in session when South Carolina Representative Preston S. Brooks entered the chamber to insult that Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner had levelled at Brooks' cousin, Senator Andrew P. Butler. Sumner's Crime Against Kansas speech Sumner was addressing copies of the speech at his desk when Brooks began his attack, striking the northern senator repeatedly with a walking cane, which brought force of the blows. -
Dred Scott Decision
In 1846 Scott tried to purchase his freedom, but his master refused. Scott then sued for his freedom and after various delays, a jury in 1850 declared him free, basing its judgment on a series of precedents dating from 1824, in which Missouri courts had held that if a master took a slave to a free state, that slave became free. However, in 1852 the Missouri Supreme Court reversed these precedent. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Douglas was a Democrat and a Senator, having been elected in 1847. He had chaired the Senate Committee on Territories. He helped enact the Compromise of 1850. Douglas then was a proponent of Popular Sovereignty. Lincoln would lost the Senate race in 1858, but beat Douglas out in the 1860 race for the US Presidency. -
Raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia
John Brown's plan was simple, he and his men would establish a base in the Blue Ridge Mountains from which they would assist runaway slaves and launch attacks on slaveholders. Many of the men he had recruited the previous year had changed their minds ordidn't think the plan would work. Brown set out for Harpers Ferry with 21 men but they were caught and hung. -
Election of 1860
Lincoln won a lot of electoral votes and won most of the northern votes. The attack of Ft. Sumner was after his election. Battles over the spread of slavery to new territories and states had gripped the United States. Lincoln did very well in the northern states, and though he garnered less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationwide. He won no southern votes. -
Formation of the Confederate States of America (Jefferson Davis)
Southerners had been talking secession for many years, and most people in the North had come to look on such talk as a counter in the game of politics. The government created by the 11 Southern states of the United States after they seceded from the Union. The Union refused to recognize the Confederacy. -
Fort Sumter
On April 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort, which was unable to reply effectively. The bombing of Fort Sumter was the opening engagement of the American Civil War. Although there were no casualties during the bombardment, One Union general was killed and three wounded. -
First Battle of Bull Run
At the beginning of the five hour battle the Union soldiers had the Confederates on the retreat, except for one group commanded by General Jackson. The battle showed that this was not going to be a one sided war for both sides.The casualties soared to 2,900 killed. -
Battle of Shiloh
Grant's army, loosely assembled and unstrategically positioned, was assaulted by surprise on April 6, 1862. The next day began with the same desperate fighting that had been seen the previous, but the refreshed and reinforced union troops rallied, and broke confederate line after line. The dead at Shiloh amounted to over 3,482, with more than 20,000 casualties. -
Siege of Richmond
Grant's objective was the destruction of Lee's army. At first Grant tried to outflank Lee's right flank, and that's what took the fighting to Petersburg. The Texans held the marines at bay until Mower's troops arrived and formed a line of battle, at which time the Southerners fell back to a position. -
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion into the North and led to Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Repeated Union attacks, and equally vicious Confederate counterattacks, swept back and forth across a cornfield and the West Woods. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of the civil war. Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation. The Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy for exhange of their freedom. -
Battle of Gettysburg
Turing point of the Civil War. The Union army beat the Confederates and the Confederates lost military and political control. Days later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. -
Siege at Vicksburg
On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. After the war, the Confederacy was effectively split in half. The fortress city of Vicksburg keeps the Mississippi River from complete Union control. General Sherman's key objective in the West is to take the city Vicksburg and cut the Confederacy in two. Facing Grant is hundreds of miles of impenetrable bayous, a formidable army and Confederate raiders. -
Gettysburg Address
For three days in , Union and Confederate forces fought fierce battles at and near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. President Lincoln followed Everett's two hour speech with what came to be known as the Gettysburg Address. In about two minutes, Lincoln gave his speech. -
Election of 1864
Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg a year earlier, the Southern armies came back fighting with a vengeance. Lincoln won the popular vote that eluded him in his first election. He won the electoral college by 212 to 21 and the Republicans had won three-fourths of Congress. -
Sherman’s “March to the Sea”
William T. Shermans to the Marchto the Sea, was the most destructive campaign against a civilian population during the Civil War. Sherman's march to the sea was the beginning of the end for South Carolina. After capturing Atlanta, Sherman marched his army to the sea, capturing the city of Savannah in December. -
13th Amendment
President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union and should have easily passed the Congress. -
Freedmen’s Bureau
The Bureau was established in the War Department in 1865 to undertake the relief effort and the social reconstruction. That would bring freed people to full citizenship. It issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary camps, helped locate family members, promoted education, helped freedmen legalize marriages, etc. It worked with African American soldiers and sailors and their heirs to secure back pay, bounty payments, and pensions. -
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Happened at Ford's Theater at night with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth came behind him and shot him in the back of the head.Nine hours later, at 7:22 AM on April 15th, Lincoln died. This angered the people of the north but the people of the south still hated the North. -
Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia
General Robert E. Lee was surrounded. He knew it was over. The Confederates were largely outnumbered with only 100,000 men. After Lee and Grantshook hands, Grant sat down to tell Lee of his terms of the surrender. Lee then asked for those terms to be written down on paper. -
14th Amendment
Ratified on July 9, 1868. It forbids states from denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law". It greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all Americans. The effect: meant more equality toward blacks. -
15th Amendment
It granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. The effect: Feminists, especially, fought against the amendment because women were not included in the guarantee of suffrage. -
Election of 1876
Samuel J. Tilden (New York) outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes 165, with 20 uncounted votes . Hayes had promised to withdraw federal support for the Republican regimes in Louisiana and South Carolina. In the final days of the campaign Tilden was regarded as the favorite, and even Hayes believed that he had lost. Hayes became the next President.
