The American Civil War - This Mighty Scourge of War

Chronology

1820 Missouri Compromise admits
Missouri as a slave state, but
prohibits slavery elsewhere in
Louisiana territory above latitude
36 30' N

1828 South Carolina politician John
Calhoun urges nullification in
response to the 1828 tariff

1831 Nat Turner's slave rebellion sends
shock waves through the South;
William Lloyd Garrison founds
abolitionist newspaper The Liberator

1836 Congress adopts the Gag Resolution
on slavery

1845 Texas and Florida are admitted to the

Union

1846-48 War between the United States and
Mexico

1846 Wilmot Proviso calls for barring
slavery from lands acquired from
Mexico

1848 Free Soil Party fields presidential
candidate

1850 Compromise of 1850 includes
admission of California as a free state
and enactment of a tough Fugitive
Slave Law

1852 Whig Party fields its last serious
presidential candidate, signals
breakdown of the two-party system;
publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin makes many
northerners sensitive to the issue of
slavery

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the

Missouri Compromise and inflames

sectional tensions

1857 The Supreme Court's Dred Scott

decision opens Federal territories to

slavery and outrages many people in

the North

1859 John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry

intensifies sectional tensions

1860 6 November Abraham Lincoln

elected President

20 November South Carolina secedes

from the Union

1861 9 January-1 February The remaining

six states of the Lower South secede

4 February-11 March Convention

of delegates from the seceded states

in Mongtomery, Alabama, writes a

Constitution and selects Jefferson

Davis and Alexander H Stephens

as provisional President and

Vice-President of the Confederate

States of America

4 March Lincoln's first inaugural

address

12-13 April Confederate

bombardment results in the surrender

of Fort Sumter

15 April-8 June Four states of the

Upper South secede in response to

Lincoln's call for volunteers

Early May Winfield Scott briefs

President Lincoln about a strategy

later known as the 'Anaconda Plan'

11 May Camp Jackson affair, St Louis,

Missouri

20 May Confederate Congress

votes to move national government

from Montgomery, Alabama, to