-
Compromise of 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 regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). -
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
This was one of the most controversial acts of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It declared that all runaway slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters. -
Stowe’s “Uncle Toms Cabin”
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.[2] -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of Missouri between 1854 and 1861 -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory -
Beecher's Bibles
Beecher's Bibles" was the name given to the breech loading Sharps rifles that were supplied to the anti-slavery immigrants in Kansas. -
Brooks-Sumner Incident
He is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner (Free Soil-Massachusetts), an abolitionist, with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate, on May 22, 1856. This was in retaliation for an anti-slavery speech by Sumner in which Sumner attacked Brooks' uncle, Senator Andrew Butler (Democrat-South Carolina). -
Pottawatomie Massacre
occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence (Kansas) by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers (some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles) killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas -
Dred Scott
an African-American slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as "the Dred Scott Decision -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
Freeport Doctrine
was articulated by Stephen A. Douglas at the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on August 27, 1858, in Freeport, Illinois. Lincoln tried to force Douglas to choose between the principle of popular sovereignty proposed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the majority decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated that slavery could not legally be excluded from U.S. territories -
John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. -
Abraham Lincoln wins Election
Republican Abraham Lincoln wins the Presidential election with 39.7% of the vote, defeating Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge and John Bell. -
South Carolina Secedes
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first Southern state to declare its secession and later formed the Confederacy. The first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston by its Citadel cadets upon a civilian merchant ship Star of the West bringing supplies to the beleaguered Federal garrison at Fort Sumter January 9, 1861. -
Lecompton Constitution
was followed by the Leavenworth and Wyandotte).[1] The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates -
Raid on Lawrence, Kansas
a rebel guerrilla attack during the U.S. Civil War by Quantrill's Raiders, led by William Clarke Quantrill, on the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas.
The attack on August 21, 1863, targeted Lawrence due to the town's long support of abolition and its reputation as a center for Jayhawkers and Redlegs, which were free-state militia and vigilante groups known for attacking and destroying farms and plantations in Missouri's pro-slavery western counties.
