The following is an adapted excerpt from The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War, used with the author’s permission. On August 30, 1800, a storm likely changed the course of the United States forever when an enslaved blacksmith named…
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On July 22, 1833, the British House of Commons passed the Slavery Abolition Act, marking a historic turning point in the British Empire’s long entanglement with slavery. Though imperfect and cautious in scope, the Act initiated the gradual dismantling of an institution that had…
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The Northwest Ordinance, adopted on July 13, 1787, established a government for the Northwest Territory, outlined state admission process, ensured equality with the original thirteen states, protected civil liberties, and banned slavery in new territories. The Ordinance would play a major role in the…
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On July 2, 1839, over 50 captives on a slave ship named La Amistad threw off their chains and seized control of the ship. Led by Joseph Cinqué, the Africans killed the ship’s captain and another crew member, demanding to be returned to Mendiland (now Sierra Leone).…
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Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The first Juneteenth was celebrated on June 19, 1865, marking a pivotal moment in American history and symbolizing the end of slavery in the…
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In the fading light of the evening on June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln stepped before the Illinois Republican Convention in Springfield and delivered a speech that startled even his allies with its moral clarity and stark prognosis. Accepting his party’s nomination for the United…
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In a quiet but fateful moment on June 5, 1851, the abolitionist newspaper The National Era published the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, a serialized novel by a relatively unknown New England woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe. The…
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On the night of May 24, 1856, one of the most violent episodes of “Bleeding Kansas” occurred at Pottawatomie Creek, dramatically influencing the already tense atmosphere between proslavery and antislavery forces in the United States. Angered by the beating of Charles Sumner, John Brown, a…
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On May 22, 1856, the United States Senate chamber witnessed a shocking and violent episode that reflected the intense sectional tensions of the antebellum era. Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina brutally assaulted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane, an event that…
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On May 21, 1856, the town of Lawrence, Kansas—a fledgling stronghold of free-state resistance on the contested frontier—was looted and burned by a posse of some 800 proslavery partisans under the authority of a federal marshal. Though often recast in summary as a mere…
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