Day 1 Important Points

1.  Around the time of the American Revolution, northern states, influenced by the idea that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", begin emancipating their approx. 50,000+ slaves, mostly through gradual emancipation.  This is a part of a movement towards abolishing slavery also going on in western Europe.  The Southern states did not emancipate their 350,000 slaves as their economy was very depended on labor-intensive agriculture to supply Europe with in-demand exports.

2.   In the early republic, the founders who owned slaves deemed it to be a "necessary evil" that one day would disappear.  But, around 1800, the "cotton gin" fuels an international thirst for cotton and slavery becomes more important and profitable.  In 1860, the "cotton south" (the 7 most southern states) exports $200 million of cotton. 

3.  1791 - 1804, the slaves in Haiti throw the only successful slave revolution in history.  They kill thousands of white slave owners.  This looms large in the consciousness of southern slave-owners well into the Civil War.

4.  In the spring of 1819, Missouri, in the Louisiana territory purchased from France in 1803, petitions Congress for statehood when the states totaled 11 free and 11 slave.  Arguments break out in Congress. The first significant talk of "disunion" over slavery enters the national debate. 

The matter is finally resolved in 1820 when Kentucky senator Henry Clay brokers a compromise that brings Missouri into the Union as a slave state, Maine in as a free state, and determines the status of the rest of the Louisiana territory by a line at the 36 30' latitude line with future free states above and slave states below.

5.  In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison founds the abolitionist newspaper Liberator.  The language against slavery turns harsh and Garrison and others demand an immediate ending of slavery.  In 1837, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina  claims in Congress that the founders were wrong; slavery is not a "necessary evil" but "a positive good" for both slaves and white society. 

6.  In 1798, Thomas Jefferson argued that the U.S. government (the Constitution) was a compact of states with each state having the power to nullify (disregard) federal laws.  From 1828 - 1833, South Carolina argued Jefferson's position in a lengthy dispute against a federal protective tariff, nullified the law, and armed for a revolt.  Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster made famous speeches in Congress for "Union" arguing against breaking up the Union.

In 1833, President Andrew Jackson threatened to send the U.S. Army into South Carolina and Congress lowered the tariff rate.  South Carolina withdrew their nullification and agreed to pay the tariff.