Antebellum Reform (1790–1860)

First American cotton spinning mill opens in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Congress prohibits Americans from engaging in international slave trading

Canals link the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes

David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World

Nat Turner's slave revolt in Virginia; William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator begins publication

Cherokee Supreme court case Worcester v. Georgia; Black Hawk War

Great Britain abolishes slavery in the West Indies

Philadelphia race riots; first strike by Lowell mill workers to protest wage cuts

Republic of Texas founded; Angelina Grimke's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South; Sarah Bagley begins working at a cotton mill in Lowell, Massachusetts

Financial panic and depression

Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes

World Anti-Slavery Convention in London

Sarah Bagley organizes Lowell Female Labor Reform Association

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Irish potato famine

Mexican-American War begins

Mormons move westward from Illinois

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican-American War; Women's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, NY

Cholera epidemic in New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati

Compromise of 1850 brings the
Fugitive Slave Law

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; Frederick Douglass delivers Fourth of July speech

Financial Panic

John Brown and supporters raid federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry

Cotton production and prices peak; South Carolina becomes first state to secede from Union