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Underground Railroad
a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists. -
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War with Mexico (Consequences p.234-35)
-The U.S and Mexican tensions were terrible.
-The Union was even more split, because states had to became slave and free state
-The U.S. paid 15 million for the Mexican Cession. -
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The Compromise of 1850
A package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) -
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Fugitive Slave Law
Allowed the capture and return of slaves. -
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Pro-Con Literature
Uncle Tom’s Cabin- Made a lot of Northerners regarded all slave owners seem cruel. (1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Impending Crisis of the South- (1857 by Hinton R. Helper) Stated that Slavery weakened the South’s economy. Distributed in the North.
Southerners reacted by calling wage workers “wage slaves” since they are forced to work long hours in factories and mines. -
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Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854
Created the territories of Nebraska and Kansas. -
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Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas - a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas -
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The Republican Party established
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party -
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Dred Scott vs Sandford (1857
In essence, the decision argued that as a slave Scott was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court. The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney also stated that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories (thus invalidating the Missouri Compromise [1820]) and that African Americans could never become U.S. citizens. -
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Sumner-Brooks Incident
Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with a cane. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called "The Crime Against Kansas." -
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Lecompton Constitution
Under the doctrine of popular sovereignty, proslavery advocates flooded into Kansas Territory and created a government supportive of slavery. By 1857, they drew up a pro-slavery document called the Lecompton Constitution, which would make Kansas a slave state. Sept 1857 -
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The Panic of 1857
The midcentury economic boom ended in 1857 with a financial panic. Prices for Midwestern farmers, dropped and the unemployment in Northern cities increased. Cotton prices remain high, so the South was less affected. Some Southerners believed their plantations was more important and that the Northern economy was not needed. -
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John Browns Raid
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. Oct 16, 1859 – Oct 18, 1859 -
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The Election of 1860
The United States Presidential Election of Nov 6, 1860 was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged triumphant. The election of Lincoln served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War.