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Invention of Cotton Gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. -
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,except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. -
Tariff of 1828 and Nullification Crisis
In November 1832 the Nullification Convention met. The convention declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable within the state of South Carolina after February 1, 1833. They said that attempts to use force to collect the taxes would lead to the state's secession. -
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Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
The Liberator is Published
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The Liberator is Published
The Liberator was a newspaper founded William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp in 1831.[1] Garrison co-published weekly issues of The Liberator from Boston continuously for 35 years, from January 1, 1831, to the final issue of December 29, 1865. Although its circulation was only about 3,000, and three-quarters of subscribers were African Americans in 1834 -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War (1846-48). Soon after the war began, President James K. Polk sought the appropriation of $2 million as part of a bill to negotiate the terms of a treaty. -
Compromise of 1850
As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah -
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'Bleeding Kansas'
Bleeding Kansas is the term used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the 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. -
Brooks-Sumner event
In May 1856, ardent abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a two-day speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. He described excesses that occurred there and the South’s complicity in them. Only some of what he said was true. A specific target of his invective was Sen. Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, who was not present during the speech. Sumner himself regarded the speech as the "most thorough phillipic ever uttered in a legislative body. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
Underground Railroad
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Election of 1860
United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on Nov. 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. -
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Secession of Southern States
After the Civil War began in April, four slave states – Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee – of the Upper South also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy
