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compromise of 1850
-September, 1850
-The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills, passed in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North. Slavery was abolished. -
Publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin
is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War" It was the best selling book in the 19th century. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.The result was that pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, leading to a bloody civil war there. -
Brooks/Summer Affair (Violence in Congress)
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a two-day speech entitled The Crime Against Kansas. He described excesses that occurred there and the South’s complicity in them. -
Dred Scott Decision
Was the name of an African-American slave. He was taken by his master, an officer in the U.S. Army, from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and then to the free territory of Wisconsin. He lived on free soil for a long period of time. In March of 1857, Scott lost the decision as seven out of nine Justices on the Supreme Court declared no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen, or ever had been a U.S. citizen. -
John Brown's Raid
John Brown led a group of 21 men (16 white and 5 black) across the Potomac River from Maryland to Virginia. Brown's ultimate goal was to destroy the slave system of the South. The arms captured by the raid would allow Brown and his followers to establish a stronghold in the near-by mountains from which they could attack slaveholders and draw liberated slaves into their ranks. -
Election of 1860
Was a quadrennial election held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. the Civil War disrupted the electoral process to the extent that no Presidential Electoral votes were recognized from all eleven Southern states in 1864. -
Bleeding kansas
Was a series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, less than three months before the Battle of Fort Sumter which began the Civil War.
