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Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso proposed an American law to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War. The conflict over the this was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War. -
Free Soil Movement
A single-issue party, its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. -
Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin published
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe -
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"Bleeding Kansas" Incidents
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "southern" elements in Kansas. -
Republican Party formed
The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. Founded by Ripon, WI. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on. 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´ -
Caning of Charles Summer
Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner, with a cane in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized 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. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that eventually led to the American Civil War. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford decision
A slave (Dred Scott in this case) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debate
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. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was an effort by armed abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia -
Election of Lincoln
The United States Presidential Election of 1860 was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The election of Lincoln led to the immediate secession of the 7 lower Cotton States in the South, who formed the Confederacy in February 1861, before Lincoln took office. Lincoln's further actions caused 4 more Southern states (VA, NC, TN, AR) to join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War
