Timeline of Events Leading to the Civil War
The Civil War, which pitted Northerners against Southerners on the issue of slavery, was perhaps the most devastating period in American History.
The war did not come about out of nowhere. There was a long lead-up to the conflict during which compromises were made and events took place that left one side or the other bitter.
This tension could be traced back to 1820, when Missouri requested statehood. At the time, America was balanced at 11 free states and 11 states that permitted slavery. Neither side wanted to allow Missouri to join the country on the other side.
The resulting Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri as a slave state along with Maine as a free state to maintain the balance, It also prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36°30′ parallel.
Routinely, enslaved men and women in the South risked their lives to escape to freedom in the north. In 1849, Harriet Tubman made a daring escape to Philadelphia from enslavement in Maryland. She eventually would earn the nickname "Moses" after returning to the South at least 13 times to rescue more than 70 others.
Tubman and others used a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.
This enraged Southerners and they looked for a way to stop it. In 1850, they thought they found a way with the Fugitive Slave Act.
This controversial law required that anyone who escaped slavery be returned, even if they were in a free state. It also made the government responsible for this.
The act was part of the Compromise of 1850 that brought California into the Union as a free state and banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed many Black people from the South escape from slavery along the Ohio River. She also saw them captured by brutal bounty-hunters and returned to enslavement.
Stowe used her experiences to write the antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was published in 1852. She hoped to educate people about the horrors of slavery and she was successful.
Her book was read by millions and became the best-selling novel of the 19th century. It inspired many Americans across the North to become abolitionists. White people across the South were outraged at the novel's release and the country inched closer to a conflict.
As western territories continued to grow, Southern politicians refused to allow new states north of 36°30' latitude. In 1854, however Senator Stephen Douglas proposed repealing the Missouri Compromise and using "popular sovereignty" to determine if slavery was allowed in new states.
Under popular sovereignty, the citizens of each territory would determine whether slavery would be allowed. This became the Kansas-Nebraska Act due to the two territories it created.
Northerners were furious at the agreement and felt it was an attack against free states. Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln debated Douglas about the law and gave a passionate moral argument against slavery.
Three years later, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that further angered abolitionists and others across the North.
Dred Scott was an enslaved man who sued for his freedom because he was taken, along with his wife and children, to the free state of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory for four years.
The 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case held that Scott was property, not a citizen and that no Black persons could be citizens of the United States.
This decision enraged Northerners who denounced it for its overt racism and terrible legal reasoning. Many feared that the Court might next rule that no state could exclude slavery. Any resolution between the two sides seemed impossible. The Dred Scott ruling is widely considered to be the worst Supreme Court decision ever made.
As the election of 1860 loomed closer, two candidates - Abraham Lincoln on the Republican side and Stephen A. Douglas for the Democrats - again engaged in debate.
During these Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, Lincoln stated that it was dangerous to put the decision of slavery into the hands of the states, something that Douglas supported since he had drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Instead, he said that the issue of slavery should be handled by the federal government.
Lincoln would go on to win the Presidential Election of 1860, giving hope to Northerners who feared how the power of Southerners had grown.
Just before the start of the Civil War, tensions ramped up even further as a set of drastic measures were taken. John Brown, an abolitionist, led a raid in Harper’s Ferry in October 1859, in present-day West Virginia in an attempt to start a slave uprising.
Brown felt that the only hope for ending the evil system of slavery was for enslaved people to fight for their freedom. John Brown's Raid was unsuccessful, but its impact loomed large. Many Northerners admired his bravery while Southerners were shocked and fearful of further violent actions for freedom.
The next year, South Carolina moved to secede, or legally separate, from the United States following the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Ten more states would follow and together, their government became known as the Confederacy in 1861.
The Civil War to unite the country would begin next.