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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 and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
Wilmot Proviso
Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot proposed that an appropriations bill be amended to forbid slavery in any of the new territories acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso passed the House twice but was defeated in the Senate. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas.
THe US took possession of the former Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico (Mexican Cession). The US paid $15 million and assumed responsibility for any claims of American Citizens against Mexico. -
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). The states get to decided if they are slave or free states. -
Fugitive Slave Law-
Allowed capture and return of slaves. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin-
A book that made a lot of Northerners regarded all slave owners seem cruel. Ignited the war. By Harriet Beecher Stowe -
Kansas-Nebraska Act -
created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Are they slave or free, popular sovereignty came into play and Nebraska - Free, Missouri - Slave, and Missouri was fearful of Kansas being a free state. Missouri sends people to vote for Kansas; this leads to Bleeding Kansas -
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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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Southerner's Reaction
Southerners reacted by calling wage workers “wage slaves” since they are forced to work long hours in factories and mines.
Sociology for the South (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857) showed George Fitzhugh questioning the equal rights for "unequal men" and attacking wage system. -
Republican Party est. -
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. This Party was made because of what happened in Kansas and Nebraska. -
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." -
Impending Crisis of the South-
Stated that Slavery weakened the South’s economy. Distributed in the North. By Hinton R. Helper -
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. It did not work, Kansas became a free state. -
Panic of 1857
The midcentury economic boom ended in 1857 with a financial panic. Prices especially 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. -
Dred Scott v Sandford - Part 1
The Dred Scott decision was the Supreme Court’s ruling on March 6, 1857, that having lived in a free state and territory did not entitle a slave, Dred Scott, to his freedom. In essence, the decision argued that as a slave Scott was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court. -
Dred Scott V Sandford Part 2
The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney also stated that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories and that African Americans could never become U.S. citizens. Lincoln-Douglas Debates Aug - Oct 1858 - The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate -
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John Brown’s 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. -
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.
