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Key Dates in U.S. Slavery after 1840

1840

William Henry Harrison is elected the first Whig President; he dies, however, after only one month in office, and his Vice President, slave-owning Virginian John Tyler, dubbed “His Accidency,” serves almost a full four-year term.

1844

James K. Polk, a slave-owning Tennessean, dubbed “Young Hickory,” wins the White House for the Democrats. He is avowedly expansionist, seeking to secure not only Texas but California from Mexico and Oregon from Britain.

1845

Texas is annexed to the Union as a slave state. Because she comes in not as previously organized U.S. territory but rather as a separate nation, she negotiates unique terms, including having the right to break into five separate (slave-owning) states. That same year Frederick Douglass publishes his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

1846

The United States orchestrates a war (1846-48) with Mexico that is a blatant means to seize territory. The war is largely supported by Democrats and opposed by Whigs and is wildly popular in the South.

1848

Gold is discovered in California, setting off the Gold Rush of 1849. Whig and Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor wins the White House. He too, however, dies in office (1850), elevating a pro-southern Vice President (Millard Fillmore) to the position.

1850

The Compromise of 1850, orchestrated by Henry Clay, averts the crisis that has arisen with the acquisition of Mexican land. California is brought into the Union as a free state, the territory of New Mexico is taken out of Texas, and the slave trade—but not slavery—is outlawed in the District of Columbia; however, the Fugitive Slave Act strengthens laws demanding the return of runaway slaves.

1851

Partly in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Beecher Stowe, inspired by a vision from God, serializes Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era. When the novel appears in book form the following year, it is hugely successful.

1854

Southern novelists retaliate to Uncle Tom’s Cabin with pro-slavery literary propaganda, such as Caroline Lee Hentz’s The Planter’s Northern Bride. Democrat Stephan Douglas designs the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repeals the Missouri Compromise and brings in Kansas and Nebraska as territories in which their populations will determine whether slavery will be legal or not (“popular sovereignty”). The result is “Bleeding Kansas,” a violence-riddled civil war that anticipates the larger national conflict in seven years.

1856

The Republican Party is organized as a specifically antislavery party.

1857

The U.S. Supreme Court, led by southerner Roger Taney, offers the Dred Scott decision, dictating that slaves and former slaves can never be citizens of the United States and that Congress has no power to prohibit slavery in federal territory. The Panic of 1857 takes the nation into recession, but the cotton market continues to boom, bolstering southern aggressiveness and the myth of “King Cotton.”

1860

South Carolina secedes from the Union in the wake of Republican Abraham Lincoln’s election. States from the Deep South (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) soon follow suit, although border slave states Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas take longer to leave the Union. Slave states Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remain in the Union, and western counties of Virginia ultimately return to the Union as West Virginia.

1861

Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston’s harbor (April 12), and the fort soon falls (April 14). As armies are organized, the first major conflict occurs at Bull Run (July 21).

1862

After the Battle of Antietam (September 17), one of the bloodiest days of the war, Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

1863

The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect on January 1. With the fall of Vicksburg (July 3), virtually freeing the Mississippi and splitting the Confederacy, and the loss at Gettysburg (July 1-3), chances of Confederate victory become increasingly bleak.

1864

Ulysses S. Grant is moved from the western front to the Virginian front; William T. Sherman besieges and captures Atlanta (September 1) before marching through Georgia and the Carolinas.

1865

Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of North Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant (April 9), and other major Confederate forces soon do the same. John Wilkes Booth assassinates Abraham Lincoln (April 15), and Andrew Johnson ascends to the Presidency. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery in the United States (December 6).