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Missouri Compromise
They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of th -
Mexican goverment outlawed slavery
It expected the Texans to follow a suit. -
The compromise Tarriff of 1833
Henry Clay ends the Nullification Crisis by lowering some rates.No other states supported South Carolina's argument and position and after Clay's compromise legislation passes, South Carolina withdrew its resolution -
Goergia Law
A Georgia law prescribes the death penalty for publication of material with the intention of provoking a slave rebellion -
Liberty Laws
Massachusetts and eight other states pass personal liberty laws under which state officials are forbidden to assist in the capture of fugitive slaves -
Wilmots Proviso
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Mexican-American War
President James Polk sent the army to Texas where the Mexican forces attacked. -
California Gold Rush
The Gold Rush rapidly populated Northern California and immigrant settlers who outnumbereded the southerner settlers.California's constitutional convention unanimously rejects slavery and petitions to join the union as a free state without first being organized as a territory -
Confederate States
Democrats control state governments in all the states which will form the Confederate States -
Kansas Nebraska-Act
Congress enacts the Kansas-Nebraska Act, providing that popular sovereignty, a vote of the people when a territory is organized, will decide "all questions pertaining to slavery" in the Kansas-Nebraska territories. This abrogates the Missouri Compromise prohibition of slavery north of the 36°30' line of latitude and increases Northerners' fears of a Slave Power encroaching on the North -
Border Ruffians
Violence by pro-slavery looters from Missouri known as Border Ruffians and anti-slavery groups known as Jayhawkers breaks out in "Bleeding Kansas" as pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters try to organize the territory as slave or free -
Tarriff of 1857
Authored primarily by R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, uses the Walker Tariff as a base and lowers rates -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858
focus on issues and arguments that will dominate the Presidential election campaign of 1860. Pro-Douglas candidates win a small majority in the Illinois legislature in the general election and choose Douglas as U.S. Senator from Illinois for another term. However, Lincoln emerges as a nationally known moderate spokesman for Republicans and a moderate opponent of slavery -
The Southern Commercial Convention
endorses reopening the African slave trade to reduce the price of slaves and widen slaveholding. Many members think this would lessen feelings that the slave trade was immoral and provide an incentive or tool for Southern nationalism -
South Seceds Union
South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed.