Portuguese build castle at Elmina on the Gold Coast of Africa

First slaves sold at Jamestown

Stono Uprising of South Carolina slaves terrifies white planters

Gabriel Prosser leads abortive slave rebellion in Virginia

Slave trade is ended (January)

Slaves revolt in Point Coupee section of Louisiana

Denmark Vesey conspiracy uncovered in Charleston, South Carolina

David Walker publishes Appeal calling for slave insurrection

First National Negro Convention meets

Slaves under Nat Turner rebel in Virginia, killing almost sixty whites

Virginia legislature votes against gradual emancipation

Blacks fight alongside Indians in the Second Seminole War

David Wilmot introduces proviso banning slavery in the Mexican cession

Congress debates sectional issues and enacts Compromise of 1850

Group of free blacks rescues escaped slave Shadrack from federal authorities in Boston

Congress passes Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing Missouri Compromise

Hinton R. Helper attacks slavery on economic grounds in The Impending Crisis of the South; the book is suppressed in the southern states

Supreme Court decides Dred Scott case and legalizes slavery in all territories

Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (September)

Lincoln issues final Emancipation Proclamation (January)

Congress passes Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery (January)

Johnson vetoes Civil Rights Act, it passes over his veto (April), Congress passes Fourteenth Amendment (June)

Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson establishes constitutionality of "separate but equal" facilities