1. CIVIL WAR DECISION TREE (insert your hidden agenda here)

2. Compromise of 1850

3. 1852 Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a instant runaway best-seller

4. 1853 Completion of Ohio-New York Railway connection

5. 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act (Stephen Douglas’s concept of “popular sovereignty)

6. May, 1856 Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts caned by Sen. Preston Brooks in the Senate chamber

7. 1856 New Republican Party launches first Presidential candidate, John C. Fremont with the slogan: Free Soil, Free Speech and Fremont

8. 1857 Supreme Court hands down Dred Scott decision

9. 1857 Kansas applies for admission to the union with the Lecompton Constitution protecting slavery

10. Panic of 1857 hits northern businesses and banks especially hard

11. Feb. 1859 Oregon admitted to the union with a state constitution banning slavery

12. October 1859 John Brown raids Harper’s Ferry in Virginia

13. November 1860 Abraham Lincoln elected as the first Republican president

14. December 1861 South Carolina secedes from the Union and takes all federal military installations in the state except Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor

15. December, 1860 – February 1861 Six more states secede from the union listing grievances and their right to dissolve the compact of government of 1789

16. December 1860-March 1861 President Buchanan decides to continue the delivery of mail and not to contest seizure of military installations in seceded states. Only Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida and Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina remained in federal hands. Buchanan authorizes federal ships to bring supplies only.

17. February 1861 Virginia convenes a Peace Congress in Washington DC

18. February 1861 Congress votes down the Peace Congress’s suggestions for compromise.

19. February 1861 Seceded states write a constitution and form the Confederate States of America

20. March 1861 Lincoln sworn in as President. In his inaugural address he refuses to recognize or allow the dissolution of the Union unless by all parties to the Constitution.

21. March-April 1861 Lincoln confers with Cabinet and military leaders, decides to defend Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens; his officers inform President Jefferson Davis of Union intentions

22. 10 April 1861 Jefferson Davis authorizes Confederate army to fire on Fort Sumter and then to take it.