1774: The Continental Congress approves a
resolution prohibiting slave importations and further American participation in
the slave trade.
1775: Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor,
promises freedom to any slaves who desert rebellious masters and serve in the
Crown’s forces.
1777: Vermont’s Constitution outlaws slavery.
1779: John Laurens proposes to Congress the arming
of 3,000 slaves to resist a British invasion of the South; Congress approves
the proposal but the South Carolina legislature rejects it.
1780: Pennsylvania adopts a gradual emancipation
law.
1782: A Virginia law permits private manumissions.
1784: By a single vote, Congress rejects
Jefferson’s proposal to exclude slavery from the western territories after
1800.
1787: The Constitutional Convention agrees to count
three-fifths of a state’s slave population in apportioning representations;
forbids Congress from ending the Atlantic slave trade until 1808; and requires
fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners.
1787: The Northwest Ordinance prohibits slavery
north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi.
1790: The Quakers and the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society petition Congress to discourage the slave trade and slaveholding producing
an uproar in Congress.
1792: Congress refuses to accept an antislavery
petition from Quaker Warner Mifflin.
1792: Kentucky becomes the first new slave state
admitted to the Union.
1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin.
1794: Congress
prohibits Americans from engaging in the slave trade to foreign countries.
1798: Georgia prohibits further imports of slaves
from outside the United States.
1798: Congress rejects a proposal to prohibit
slavery from Mississippi Territory.
1799: New York adopts a gradual emancipation law.
1800: Gabriel’s planned slave insurrection in
Richmond is uncovered.
1803: South Carolina reopens the African slave
trade.
1804: Congress restricts slaves coming into
Louisiana Territory to the property of actual settlers, but rejects a motion to
limit slavery to one year.
1804: New Jersey adopts a gradual emancipation act.
1806: President Thomas Jefferson imposes a trade
embargo on Haiti.
1807: The British Parliament and the U.S. Congress
vote to end the African slave trade.
1808: The Methodist Episcopal Church deletes its
rules proscribing slavery from copies of its Disciplines sent to the
Deep South.
1816: The American Colonization Society is founded
to resettle free blacks in Africa.
1817: James Forten leads a protest meeting of 3,000
blacks in Philadelphia against colonization.
1819: Congress authorizes the President to send
armed vessels to Africa to suppress the African slave trade to the United
States.
1819: Congress defeats an amendment that would have
prohibited slavery in Arkansas Territory.
1819: Representative James Tallmadge, Jr., proposes
an amendment to a statehood bill for Missouri that would prohibit further
introduction of slaves and gradually abolish slavery in the state.
1820: The U.S. Congress defines the slave trade as
piracy.
1820: The American Colonization Society sends an
expedition to Africa to establish a refuge for free blacks.
1820: The Missouri Compromise prohibits slavery in
the northern half of the Louisiana Purchase.
1821: Benjamin
Lundy begins publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation.
1821: Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave
state.
1822: Agitation
begins in Illinois to adopt a constitution legalizing slavery.
1822: Denmark
Vesey’s planned slave insurrection in Charleston, S.C. is uncovered.
1827: There
are an estimated 106 antislavery societies in the South with 5,150 members, and
24 organizations in the North with 1,475 members.
1829: David
Walker issues his militant Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,
threatening insurrection if slavery is not abolished and African Americans are
not granted equal rights.
1830: American Colonization Society sends just 529
free blacks to Liberia.
Jan. 1, 1831: Garrison begins publishing The Liberator,
the country's first publication to demand an immediate end to slavery. On the
front page of the first issue he declares: "I will not equivocate--I will
not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Georgia offers $5000 to anyone who would bring him to the state for trial.
Aug. 22, 1831: Nat
Turner leads a Southampton County, Virginia.
Christmas 1831: A slave insurrection erupts in Jamaica.
1833: The
British Parliament adopts a gradual emancipation plan providing compensation to
slave owners and establishing an apprenticeship plan to prepare nearly 800,000
slaves for freedom.
December, 1833: Garrison and some 60 other delegates, male
and female and black and white, form the American Anti-Slavery Society in
Philadelphia.
1831: Lane
theological seminary in Cincinnati expels antislavery students, including
Theodore Weld, many of whom become agents for the American Anti-Slavery
Society.
Oct. 1834: During anti-abolitionist rioting, a white
destroys 45 homes in Philadelphia's black community.
1835: A mob
drags Garrison through Boston's streets and nearly lynches him before
authorities remove him to a city jail for his own safety.
1836: The
number of antislavery societies reaches 527.
Nov. 7, 1837: An anti-abolitionist mob murders the Rev.
Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Ill.
1838: There
are 1,300 antislavery societies with 109,000 members.
1838: A
peace convention in Boston condemns war and repudiates "all human
politics."
1838-39: Antislavery societies gather 2 million names
on antislavery petitions.
1839: 39 African captives led by Joseph Cinque rebel
against their Cuban captors and order two surviving whites to sail the Amistad
to Africa. The ship is seized off the coast of Long Island and the Africans are
jailed in Connecticut.
1840: The
American Anti-Slavery Society splits over women's right to participate in the
administration of the organization and the advisability of nominating
abolitionists as independent political candidates.
1840: James
Birney, the Liberty Party presidential candidate, receives fewer than 7100
votes.
1841: The
Supreme Court frees the Amistad captives on the grounds that the international
slave trade is illegal.
1844: Liberty
Party presidential candidate receives 62,000 votes, capturing enough votes in
Michigan and New York to deprive Whig candidate Henry Clay of the presidency.
1844: Congress
narrowly approves the annexation of Texas.
1846: The
United States declares war with Mexico.
1846: The House of Representatives adopts the Wilmot
Proviso, which would bar slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico. The
Senate rejects the proviso.
1848: Under
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquires one-third of Mexican
territory.
1848: Conscience
Whigs and antislavery Democrats merge with the Liberty Party to form the
Free-Soil Party, which demands the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia and exclusion of slavery from the federal territories. Presidential
nominee Martin Van Buren receives 300,000 votes (about 10 percent of all votes
cast).
1850: The
Fugitive Slave Law, part of the Compromise of 1850, strips accused runaways of
the rights of trial by jury and of testifying in their own defense.
1851: A
leading antislavery weekly begins to publish Uncle Tom's Cabin.
1851: A gun
battle erupts in Christiana, Pa. between abolitionists and slave catchers.
1854: The
Republican party is organized following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
which opens Kansas and Nebraska territories to white settlement and repeals the
Missouri Compromise line restricting slavery in the northern part of the
Louisiana Purchase.
1854: Garrison publicly burns a copy of the U.S.
Constitution, calling it "a covenant with death and an agreement with
Hell."
May 24, 1856: John Brown and six companions murder five
proslavery men and boys at Pottawatomie Creek, Ks., part of a war of revenge
that leaves 200 dead.
Oct. 16, 1859: John
Brown leads a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va.