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3/5 Compromise
This was an agreement reacehd in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, it said that slaves counnted as 3/5 of a white person in representation and in taxes. This was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman. -
The Misssouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was also known as "A Balance of Power". It kept the balance between slave states and free states in the Senate. It also brought a debate in Congress over slavery. The Missouri Compromise was repealed by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and declared unconstitutional in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. -
Compromise of 1850
Congress passed a series of five separate bills in September. They contained five main points of Henry Clay's original plan. President Fillmore called the compromise the "final settlement" of the conflict between the North and South. The bills provided for slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty in the admission of new states, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia, settled a Texas boundary dispute, and established a stricter fugitive slave act. -
Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave Act required all citizens to help catch runaway slaves. Anybody who helped aid the runaways could be fined or imprisoned. This gave Northerners a more scary fealing of a slave power conspiracy. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. It inspired abolitionists. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Franklin Pierce became president in 1853. He intended to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Stephen A. Douglas, proposed organizing the region west of Misssouri and Iowa as the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott was taken by slaveholder John Sanford to the free state of Illinois and to the Wisconsin Territory, which also banned slavery. Awhile later, they returned to Missouri, a slave state. Years later, Dred Scott tried to sue Sanford for his freedom under the Missouri legal principle of "once free, always free." Under Missouri law enslaved people were entitled to freedom if they had lived in a free state at any time. He lost because he was black (slave) and was considered property. -
John Brown
John Brown was a revolutionary abolitionist from the United States. John Brown led a group of 21 men across the Potomac River from Maryland to Virginia. Their immediate objective was the capture of the cache of weapons stored at the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Brown's ultimate goal was to destroy the slave system of the South. He was surrounded and was later hung on December 2, 1859. -
Secession of the South
Many people in the South did not trust Republicans. The South's long-standing threat to leave the Union became a reality when South Carolina held a special convention and voted to secede. Eventually they seceded, even after leaders in Washington worked frantically to fashion a last-minute compromise. The states that seceded were named the Confederate States. -
Election of 1860
The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln. They thought that slavery should be excluded from the territories. Southerners feared if Lincoln won the election, the Republicans would encourage slave reports. Lincoln of course won the election by a clear majority-180 out of 303. -
Fort Sumter
The battle of Fort Sumter took place near Charleston county in South Carolina,this battle lasted from April 12 to April 14. In this battle, the Confederates won.
