-
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This novel touch on the problem of slavery and how they were treated. This caused quite a stir between the north and the south. The north likes this book but the south hated it. Many states went as far as to ban it. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Senator Stephen A. Douglas was the founder of this act. The act created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and allowed popular sovereignty. -
Republican Party
The Republican Party first emerged after the Kansas-Nebraska act. They wanted to combat slavery. They wanted to stop the spread of slavery further west. -
Bloody Kansas
Bloody Kansas was a battle between antislavery and proslavery. Antislavery didn’t want their part of the land to be turned into slavery land and proslavery wanted it to allow slavery. It created a huge conflict that ended with violence. Proslavery men attacked antislavery people. It led 200 people dead. -
Election 1856
James Buchanan was elected as the president. He was a bachelor who had been minister to Great Britain during the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This election is important because it was one of the most bitter in American history and the first in which voting divided along rigid sectional lines. -
Brooks-Sumner incident
This incident happened after Senator Charles Sumner made a comment about Andrew Butler which was Brooks Uncle. In a rage Brooks started attacking the senator with a cane. This resulted with Sumner not being able to work for a while. -
Dred Scott
Dred Scott sued for his freedom. He stated he was a slave but had been living in a free state for four years. The Missouri Court granted him his freedom but two years later the Supreme Court reversed this decision and returned Scott to slavery. “ By a 7-2 margin, the Court ruled that Dred Scott had no right to sue in federal court, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress had no right to exclude slavery from the territories.” -
House Divided Speech
This speech was given by Abraham Lincoln after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's US senator. The most famous quote from this speech was “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Which meant that a union can’t be a union if the states are divided. -
Lincoln Douglas Debates
The Lincoln Douglas debates were a series of 7 debates for campaigning. They mostly debated on slavery and territories. Douglas wanted to picture Lincoln as a fanatical "Black Republican". Lincoln stated that he supported the Fugitive Slave Law and opposed any interference with slavery in the states where it already existed. -
LeCompton Constitution
This was a document that contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. -
Harper‘s Ferry
Harpers Ferry raid was formed by John Browns plan of raiding an arsenal and arming slaves with weapons to destroy slavery. It failed and him and his men were captured. He was sent for execution on December 2nd. -
John Brown
John Brown was an American abolitionist leader. On Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown led 21 men down the road to Harpers Ferry. He wanted to raid the arsenals and arm the slaves with weapons. His plan was to free the slaves. He failed and was captured, then sentenced to death on December 2nd 1859. -
Election 1860
The election of 1860 was between Stephen Douglas, John Bell, John Breckenridge, and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln won the election which made him the 16th president of the United States. The election demonstrated the divisions within the United States just before the Civil War. -
Secession
On December 20 South Carolina became the first state to sucede from the federal union. After that Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed in January, and Texas voted to secede on February 1, 1861. This led to an establishment of Confederacy and later, the Civil War -
Lincoln’s 1” inaugural Address
This was a speech Lincoln gave after being appointed as the sixteenth president. He stated to not to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed, and pledged to suspend the activities of the federal government temporarily in areas of hostility. He didn’t want a war but if the nation called for it he was prepared.