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The middle passage was a part of the Triangular Trade, a slave trade between Africa, Europe, and America. It was usually incredibly cramped, with disease and sickness running rampant due to the lack of sanitary conditions on the ship. The children on the ship were usually allowed to go around the ship freely, while the men were usually below deck with little to no ventilation. The women were also kept together, but had some more freedoms. It was usually the women who started rebellions.
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The Fugitive Slave Clause is a clause that was added to the original constitution that requires that "a person held or labor" (a slave, indentured servant, an apprentice) who flees to another state to be returned to his or her master in the state that the person escaped. -
The Underground Railroad was a chain of safehouses and directions which was meant to help slaves escape from their masters and get to the north. Many people participated in this chain and there were tons of secret codes and songs that all gave directions you were supposed to take. The underground railroad was usually traveled in small groups, as to better avoid capture. It kept operating until 1850, usually lead by Harriet Tubman, who went there and back over 30 times.
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The Missouri Compromise was a legislative decision to add a line where slave states and free states had to be in order to prevent the further expansion slave states. It came into fruition due to the introductions of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It caused a perfect balance of slave and free states, with a ratio of 12:12. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a large slave rebellion led by a slave named Nat Turner. He was a religious man and believed he saw visions from god. He thought that these visions were telling him to revolt with extreme violence, which he did. He slaughtered slave owners, their wives, and even their children. He was later killed by being hung to death as an execution for his crimes. -
The Compromise of 1850 was a series of 5 bills passed by congress which allowed California into the nation as a free state. This caused some commotion as it was below the Missouri Compromise line and was supposed to be a slave state. They fixed this by passing the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave hunters to go into the north and take any black man they thought was an escaped slave and take them back into the south as a slave. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book written in the north by Harriet Beecher Stowe and was a global bestseller which had shined a light on the cruel and punishing world of slavery. After the book came out, many people were enraged at the south and wanted emancipation more than anything, -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a bill that was enacted when the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were included in the union. It essentially states that the state's people will have to vote on weather they want to be a slave state or a free state. This inspired countless amounts of abolitionists and slavery supporters to rush to Kansas in order to sway the vote. This enacted the period known as Bleeding Kansas due to the large amount of fighting that both sides engaged in. -
The Dred Scott Case was a very important supreme court case between slave Dred Scott and John Sanford in which a slave named Dred Scott tried to sue for his own freedom. The final ruling declared that slaves could not sue for their own freedom because all black people (free or enslaved) could never be citizens of the United States. -
John Brown's Raid was a raid on a federal armory in the south led by a northern abolitionist named John Brown and his 5 sons. They intended to storm the armory, steal the guns inside, and then led a major slave uprising in the south with said guns. Unfortunately, he was stopped by a general Robert E. Lee, who ended up executing John Brown and his sons for treason. -
The Emancipation Proclamation (also known as the Gettysburg address), was a document and speech made by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg which stated that "Four score and seven years ago, All men were created equal." He was stating that he was now fighting a war against slavery.
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