TIMELINE:

Significant Events:

1832	Abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston; Garrison expands this organization into the American Anti-Slavery Society the following year

1837	First Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women meets in New York City; African Americans comprise 10 percent of membership

1841	African American orator, writer, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivers his first antislavery speech in Nantucket, Massachusetts

1843	African American evangelist Sojourner Truth begins her abolitionist work

1848	Antislavery politicians organize the Free Soil Party to oppose the extension of slavery into western territories

1850	Compromise of 1850 admits California into the Union as a free state but also toughens the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, granting federal officials authority to apprehend and return runaway slaves who escape to free states and paying a reward for these services

1852	Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin arouses sympathy for the abolitionist cause; it sells over 300,000 copies in the first year

1858	Abraham Lincoln gains national recognition as an antislavery candidate during his unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate

Source: http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/history/africanamericanhist/section3.php