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Missouri Compromise
In 1820, amid growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery, the U.S. Congress passed a law that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while banning slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands located north. -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was a proposal to prohibit slavery in the territory acquired by the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican War. -
Mexican American War
The Mexican-American War begins when Mexican troops cross north of the Rio Grande River and open fire on U.S. troops at Fort Texas. -
Compromise of 1850
It admitted California as a free state, left Utah and New Mexico to decide for themselves whether to be a slave state or a free state, defined a new Texas-New Mexico boundary, and made it easier for slave owners to recover runways under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The act required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Outlines the lives of several enslaved people, some who become free and some who die at the hand of slave owners. -
Kansas Nebraska Act
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. -
The Caning of Summer
The Beating of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. -
Dred Scott Decision
In its 1857 decision that stunned the nation, the United States Supreme Court upheld slavery in United States territories, denied the legality of black citizenship in America, and declared the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. -
Lincoln Douglas Debates
The debates concerned the issue of slavery and its extension into territories such as Kansas. The Lincoln Douglas debates transformed Abraham Lincoln into a national figure and led to his election to the presidency in 1860. -
Raid on Harpers Ferry
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery. -
Election of 1860
American presidential election in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrats.
