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missouri compromise of 1820
In 1820, after angry debate in Congress, Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, and Maine was admitted as a free state to preserve the balance of slave and free states in the Union. Also, slavery was banned from that part of the Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30'. -
John Brown raid Harper's ferry
He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the unsuccessful raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859. Later that year he was executed but his speeches at the trial captured national attention. -
Fugitive Slave Law
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made any Federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Law-enforcement officials everywhere now had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. -
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). The compromise, drafted by Whig Henry Clay and brokered by Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas, avoided secession or civil war and reduced sectional conflict for four years. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott v. Sandford, commonly referred to as the Dred Scott decision, was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves were not protected by the constitution -
Harriet Beecher Stow
Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and author. Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicted life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom -
Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries
