1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.
Sojourner Truth gives her famous Ain’t I a Woman speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
Approximately 300 Seminoles and blacks in Texas head to Mexico, where enslavement is prohibited.
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. She becomes a major conductor on the Underground Railroad, as well as an advocate for Women’s Rights.
War with Mexico adds significant western territory to the United States and opens a new arena in the fight to check the spread of slavery.
In reaction to the decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Ohio pass personal liberty laws.
In the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the 1793 Fugitive Slave law is constitutional, while state personal liberty laws make unconstitutional demands on slave owners. Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law is declared the federal government’s responsibility, not the states.
The U.S. Supreme Court declares that the mutinous Africans from the slave ship Amistad are now free.