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Compromise of 1850
five separate bills passed by the United States Congress which calmed a four-year political issue between slave and free states regarding the territories acquired during the Mexican–American War -
Publication of Moby Dick
Melville’s sixth book, Moby-Dick, was first published in October 185. Moby-Dick was a tragic epic about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod -
Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read.she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. -
Bleeding Kansas
In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. -
Presidential election of 1856
heated election campaign that led to the election of James Buchanan, the ambassador to the United Kingdom. -
John Brown kills 5 homesteaders in Kansas
The Pottawatomie massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces. John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers and some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles—killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek. -
Dred Scott Supreme Court case
Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri.The court found that no black could claim U.S. citizenship. The Dred Scott decision incensed abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions, which would erupt in war just three years later -
Oregon becomes a state
In 1846, the border between U.S. and British territory was formally established at the 49th parallel – the part of the territory that was given to Britain would ultimately become part of Canada. Oregon was officially admitted to the union as a state on February 14th, 1859. -
John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. -
Presidential Election of 1860
held on Nov. 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law
Territory north of the sacred 36°30' line was now open to popular sovereignty. The North was outraged. The Kansas-Nebraska act made it possible for the Kansas and Nebraska territories to open to slavery.
