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1st Slave Ship Arrival in North American English Colonies
-Dutch traders brought African slaves taken from a Spanish ship to Jamestown; in North America, the Africans were also generally treated as indentured servants in the early colonial era.
-Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans. -
Invention of the Cotton Gin
- Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years the South would transition from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region’s dependence on slave labor.
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Slave Trade Ban of 1807
-The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it did encourage British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. -
Missouri Compromise
-The Missouri Compromise was a United States federal statute devised by Henry Clay. It regulated slavery in the country's western territories by prohibiting the practice in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. -
Founding of Liberia
-The founding of Liberia in the early 1800s was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests. Prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Randolph were among the best known members of ACS. -
Underground Railroad
-Slave Tice David's escaped from Kentucky into Ohio and his owner blamed an “underground railroad” for helping him to freedom. In 1839, a Washington newspaper reported an escaped slave named Jim had revealed, under torture, his plan to go north following an “underground railroad to Boston.” Vigilance Committees created to protect escaped slaves from bounty hunters in New York in 1835 and Philadelphia in 1838. -
Abolition Movement
-The movement in opposition to slavery, often demanding immediate, uncompensated emancipation of all slaves. This was generally considered radical, and there were only a few abolitionists prior to the Civil War. Almost all abolitionists advocated legal, but not social equality for blacks. Many abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison were extremely vocal and helped to make slavery a national issue, creating sectional tension because most abolitionists were from the North. -
Nat Turner Rebellion
-The slave revolt that most terrified white slaveholders was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia.
-Turner’s group, which eventually numbered around 75 blacks, murdered some 60 whites in two days before armed resistance from local whites and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.
-Supporters of slavery pointed to Turner’s rebellion as evidence that blacks were inherently inferior barbarians requiring an institution such as slavery to discipline them. -
Frederick Douglass
- Frederick Douglass published nationally significant antislavery newspapers from an office in this building. From 1847 to 1851 the paper was known as The North Star, the title under which it achieved enduring fame. From 1851 to 1860, it was known as Frederick Douglass’ Paper and for the next three years became an abolitionist journal titled Douglass’ Monthly. Thereafter Douglass retired from publishing to devote himself to recruiting African American soldiers for the Union Army.
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Harriet Tubman
-Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading slaves to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women’s suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background. -
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 territory of the United States. Enacted by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight.The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the most controversial laws of the early 19th century. -
Compromise of 1850
-Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and Stephen Douglas of Illinois, reduced sectional conflict problems arose over the Fugitive Slave act. Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico and claims north of 36°30'. It retained the Texas Panhandle, and the federal government took over the state's public debt. California was admitted as a free state, with its current boundaries. The new Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory were able under popular sovereignty, to decide to allow slavery in their borders. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
- A novel which showed the stark reality of slavery and is generally regarded as one of the major causes of the Civil War. The novel was written in 1852 by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, a teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and a dedicated abolitionist, who was once greeted by Abraham Lincoln as the "little lady who started a war."
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
-The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that mandated “popular sovereignty”–allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders. Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas–Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the influential Lincoln-Douglas debates–the bill overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. -
Bleeding Kansas
-Period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory.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. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his famed raid on Harpers Ferry. -
Brooks Attacks Sumner
The Brooks Sumner Affair occurred in the US Senate when Representative Preston Brooks used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including a relative of Brooks. Brooks nearly killed Sumner and a polarized response from the American public on the expansion of slavery. Considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that led to the Civil War. -
Dred Scott Case
-The Supreme Court issued its decision in that case, which had been brought before the court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott argued that time spent in a free state entitled him to emancipation. But the court decided that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship, therefore blacks were unable to petition the court for their freedom. This angered abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
-A series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, when both were campaigning for election to the United States Senate from Illinois. Much of the debating concerned slavery and its extension into territories such as Kansas. -
Raid on Harper's Ferry
-An attempt to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. He originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to join him when he attacked the armory, but illness prevented Tubman from joining him and Douglass believed his plan would fail and did not join him for that reason. He was later tried and hanged. -
Election of 1860
-Abraham Lincoln- republican John Breckenridge- southern democrat. Set stage for the civil war. Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's victory came declarations of secession by South Carolina and other states, which were rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln. -
Emancipation Proclamation
-Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. He didn't approve of slavery, but knew that Northerners and the residents of slave states would support abolition. He was convinced that abolition had become a good military strategy, as well as the morally correct path and issued an Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that on January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” It didn't free slaves. -
Thirteenth Amendment
- Ratified in 1865 in the aftermath of the Civil War, abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment states: “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.”
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Fourteenth Amendment
-Adopted in 1868, after the American Civil War, and addresses the equal protection and rights of former slaves. The 14th amendment limits the action of state and local officials. In addition to equal protection under the law to all citizens, the amendment also addresses what is called "due process", which prevents citizens from being illegally deprived of life, liberty, or property. -
Fifteenth Amendment
-The 15th Amendment to the Constitution 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 or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
Compromise of 1877
-An informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, Hayes pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era. -
Seperate But Equal
-Southern state legislatures began enacting the first segregation laws, Jim Crow” laws. Taken from a copied routine written by a white actor the name, Jim Crow came to serve as a general derogatory term for African Americans in the post Reconstruction South. By 1885, most southern states had laws requiring separate schools for blacks and whites, and by 1900, "persons of color” were required to be separated from whites in railroad cars, hotels, theaters, restaurants, barber shops and other places -
W.E.B. Du Bois
-An African-American writer, teacher, sociologist and activist whose work transformed the way that the lives of black citizens were seen in American society. Considered ahead of his time, Du Bois was an early champion of using data to solve social issues for the black community, and his writing. -
David Duke
-American white supremacist, white nationalist politician, white separatist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
-Duke founded the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan shortly after graduating from LSU. He became Grand Wizard of the KKK.
