Events Leading Up to the Civil War

  • Missouri Compromise

    Missouri Compromise
    The Missouri Compromise was a compromise bill was made with the conditions: 1. Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine (formerly part of Massachusetts) as free, and 2. except for Missouri, slavery was to be excluded from the Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30'. It was criticized by many southerners because it established the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners disliked it for aiding the expansion of slavery.
  • Period: to

    Abolishonist Movement

    Northerners who believe against slaveholding were called abolitionists. Abolitionists advocated around the North holding rallies and meetings. Abolitionists were also known as the Republican party.
    The Abolitionists represent one side of the Civil War. Every accomplishment of the Abolitionists was a direct opposition of the Slaveholding side.
  • Fugative Slave Act

    Fugative Slave Act
    The Fugative Slave Act was passed bt Congress as part of the compremise of 1850 between the Northerners against the expansion of slavery and pro-slavery expansion Southerns. The act required that all black people found to be escaped slaves were to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. The act raised more fears from the North of "slave power conspiracy".
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Description: Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.
    Influence: Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery but elicited praise from abolitionists.
  • Bleeding Kansas

    Bleeding Kansas
    Bleeding Kansas is the term used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. The Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. Instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. The northerns wanted the Kansas territory to be emancipated but the sounterner wanted the land to into slave farmed land.
  • Dred Scott Decision

    Dred Scott Decision
    Dred Scott’s master moved him around the North. Slavery was illegal in the North so Scott believed he deserved to be free. The Supreme Court ruled that Scott was not free in the North because under the U.S. constitution black people were not considered citizens. Scott was property of his Master and his Master’s property could not be taken from him without due process of the law. This inflamed the abolitionists because slavery was illegal in the north but Scott still was not free.
  • The Election of 1860

    The Election of 1860
    In the height of tension between North and South right before the outbreak of civil war, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states declared their secession and formed the Confederacy. This election is known as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War.
  • Southern Secession

    Southern Secession
    Southern sucession happened when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union. The Union was then divided by geographic lines. Twenty-one northern and border states remained as the United States, while the eleven slave states became the Confederate States of America.
  • Battle of Fort Sumter

    Battle of Fort Sumter
    Abraham Lincoln made the decision to send fresh supplies to the protesting Sounthern troops at Fort Sumter. In presponce, Confederate warships refused the supply and attacked the supply ship for 34 hours. The South surrendered on April 14.