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Article I, section 9 of the Constitution of the United States clearly spells out that the international slave trade cannot be banned before 1808.

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Pres. Thomas Jefferson signs into law a bill approved by the U.S. Congress the day before “to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

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Act goes into effect banning the slave trade in the United States.

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A measure known as the Missouri Compromise, worked out between the North and the South and passed by the U.S. Congress, allows the admission of Missouri as the 24th state (which will occur in 1821). It marks the beginning of the prolonged sectional conflict over the extension of slavery that leads to the American Civil War. The Senate had passed a bill allowing Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri to be admitted without restrictions on slavery. Sen. Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois then added an amendment that allowed Missouri to become a slave state but banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′. Henry Clay then skillfully led the forces of compromise, and on March 3, 1820, the decisive vote in the House admitted Maine as a free state, admitted Missouri as a slave state, and made free soil all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border.

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A series of measures called the Compromise of 1850 is passed by the U.S. Congress in an effort to settle several outstanding slavery issues and to avert the threat of dissolution of the Union.

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Sound Smart: Compromise of 1850 | History

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Fugitive Slave Act is enacted to ensure that runaway slaves are returned to their owners. This harsh law only encourages the abolition movement.

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American author Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes an anti-slavery novel in 1852. The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War"

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act critically affirms the concept of popular sovereignty (in which the residents decide whether a territory will permit slavery) over the congressional edict banning the expansion of slavery.

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Sound Smart: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 | History

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Bleeding Kansas is the term used to describe the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his famed raid on Harpers Ferry.

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Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of seven debates, take place between incumbent Democratic Sen. Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories.

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Sound Smart: The Lincoln-Douglass Debates | History

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Raid at Harper's Ferry
The arsenal of Harper's Ferry is the target of an assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown. The raid was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown is captured by Federal troops and subsequently tried and hanged in Charles Town, but his exploits inflame tensions between the country’s pro-slavery and antislavery factions.

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Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States.

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11 Southern States secede from the Union forming the Confederate States of America.

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Jefferson Davis becomes President of the Confederate States of America and remained as such through the Civil War.

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Fort Sumter - The Civil War Begins
The Civil War began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter. Confederate batteries showered the fort with over 3,000 shells in a three-and-a-half day period. After a bloodless bombardment, Robert Anderson and about 85 soldiers surrender Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. The Civil War has begun.

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Sound Smart: Fort Sumter and the Civil War | History

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Encyclopedia Britannica
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