Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War

Events leading to the American Civil War

Dred Scott, a slave, was the focus of an 1857 Supreme Court decision that angered Northern anti-slavery forces and escalated tensions leading to secession and war.
General info
Issues of the American Civil War Origins of the American Civil War Slavery in the United States Abolitionism in the United States
Important events and people
Pennsylvania Society for Abolition of Slavery Northwest Ordinance Fugitive Slave Act of 1793; Cotton gin Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Gabriel Plot; Vesey Plot Nat Turner's slave rebellion Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves American Colonization Society Missouri Compromise Tariff of 1828; Nullification Crisis American Anti-Slavery Society; Amistad American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society Prigg v. Pennsylvania Underground Railroad; Harriet Tubman Texas Annexation; Manifest Destiny Mexican-American War; Wilmot Proviso Nashville Convention Compromise of 1850 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Uncle Tom's Cabin Kansas–Nebraska Act; Popular Sovereignty Bleeding Kansas; Bleeding Sumner Dred Scott v. Sandford Lincoln–Douglas debates John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry United States presidential election, 1860 William Lloyd Garrison; John Brown (abolitionist); John C. Calhoun; Henry Clay; Jefferson Davis; Stephen A. Douglas; Frederick Douglass; James Henry Hammond; Abraham Lincoln; William H. Seward; Charles Sumner; Daniel Webster Corwin Amendment Star of the West; Battle of Fort Sumter Secession; Confederate States

This timeline of events leading up to the American Civil War describes and links to narrative articles and references about many of the events and issues which historians recognize as origins and causes of the Civil War. The pre-Civil War events can be roughly divided into a period encompassing the long term build-up over many decades and a period encompassing the five-month build to war immediately after the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in the Election of 1860 which culminated in the Fall of Fort Sumter (April 1861).

Since the early colonial period in Virginia, slavery had been a part of the socioeconomic system of British North America and was recognized in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the United States' Declaration of Independence (1776). Since then, events and statements by politicians and others brought forth differences, tensions and divisions between the people of the slave states of the Southern United States and the people of the free states of the Northern United States (including Western states) over the topics of slavery. The large underlying issue from which other issues developed was whether slavery should be retained and even expanded to other areas or whether it should be contained and eventually abolished. Over many decades, these issues and divisions became increasingly irreconcilable and contentious.

Events in the 1850s culminated with the election of the anti-slavery-expansion Republican Abraham Lincoln as President on November 6, 1860. This provoked the first round of state secessions as leaders of the Deep South cotton states were unwilling to remain in a second class political status with their way of life threatened by the President himself. Initially, the seven Deep South states seceded, with economies based on cotton (then in heavy European demand with rising prices). They were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. After the Confederates attacked and captured Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for volunteers to march south and suppress the rebellion. This pushed the four other Upper South States (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) also to secede. These states completed the formation of the Confederate States of America. Their addition to the Confederacy insured a war would be prolonged and bloody because they contributed territory and soldiers.