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Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850- was 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 regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War. -
California becomes 31st state
In 1849, Californians sought statehood and, after heated debate in the U.S. Congress arising out of the slavery issue, California entered the Union as a free, non slavery state by the Compromise of 1850. California became the 31st state on September 9, 1850. -
Uncle Toms Cabin
(1852) A novel, first published serially, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; it paints a grim picture of life under slavery. The title character is a pious, passive slave, who is eventually beaten to death by the overseer Simon Legree. -
ELection of 1852
17th election, Franklin Pierce won against Winfield Scott -
Gadsden Purchase
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. -
Bloody Kansas
(the Border War) was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "southern yankees" elements in Kansas between 1854 and 1861, including "Bleeding Congress". -
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
allowed citizens in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide locally whether to allow slavery. The act was modeled on the Compromise of 1850 but repealed both that compromise and the Missouri Compromise of 1820. -
Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks incident
On May 22, 1856, in the United States Congress, Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a walking cane in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely attacked slaveholders including a relative of Brooks. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery in the United States. -
United States presidential election of 1856
American presidential election held on Nov. 4, 1856, in which Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican John C. Frémont with 174 electoral votes to Frémont's 114. -
Dred Scott Decision
A controversial ruling made by the Supreme Court in 1857, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Dred Scott, a slave, sought to be declared a free man on the basis that he had lived for a time in a “free” territory with his master. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
(also known as The Great Debates of 1858) 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. -
John Browns Raid
or The raid on Harpers Ferry; in many books the town is called "Harper's Ferry") was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
