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The Missouri Compromise
Congress made an effort in order to preserve the balance of power between slave and free states. It was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and it admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Devised by Henry Clay. -
Manifest Destiny
Anglo-Saxon Americans’ providential mission to expand their civilization and institutions across North America. This expansion would involve progress of liberty and individual economic opportunity as well.
Territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond.
Since they were moving West they had gotten more land, leading so some of the new land owners to want to have slaves, while some didn't. -
Compromise of 1850
A collective five bills passed by United States Congress in September of 1850. Defused a four year political confrontation between the north and the south. -
The Fugitive Slave Act
Federal laws that were passed to allow the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. -
Abolitionist Movement
In the decades before the Civil War, anti-slavery sentiment sparked an abolitionist movement that employed risky and radical tactics to bring an end to slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin was an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which sold some 300,000 copies in the first three months, it was so influential even Abraham Lincoln had commented on it when the two of them met. Harriet Tubman led more than 300 people from slavery to freedom through the underground railroad. -
Bleeding Kansas
Violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-Slavery “free staters” and pro slavery “Border Ruffian” or “Southern” elements in Kansas. Pro-Slavery and free states flooded into Kansas to try and influence the decision of overturning the Missouri Compromise. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Passed by the U.S. Congress. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves to allow slavery or not. Served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north. -
Dred Scott vs. Sanford
Dred Scott, a slave who lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the state of Missouri, argued for emancipation. Landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on U.S. labor law and constitutional law. -
John Brown's raid and Nat Turner (slave rebellion)
-Abolitionist John Brown led a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
-Nat Turner, a black American slave that lead the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in United States History. -
Election of Abraham Lincoln
Nineteenth quadrennial presidential election. Abraham is elected the 16th president of the United States. He became the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote and defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.
