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Underground Railroad
UNderground railroadThe Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
Wilmot Proviso
wilmot provisoHis document he proposed, named the Wilmot Proviso, proposed that in any territory the United States gained from Mexcio "neither slavery nor involuntary servitud shall ever exist." -
Mexican American War
Mexican american warIt was an armed conflict between the US and Mexico from 1856 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 US annexation of Texas which Mexico considered part of there territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution. The war opened vast new lands to American Settlers, raising issues abouut if slavery should be allowed to spread west -
Fugitive Slave Act
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. -
Compromise of 1850
compromise of 1850The 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. -
Uncle Toms Cabin
uncle toms cabinUncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War" -
Ostend Manifesto
ostend manifestoThe Ostend Manifesto was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain and implied the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. -
Kansas-Nebraska act
nebraska actcreated 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 if they would allow slavery within each territory. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Mideastern TranscontinentalRailroad -
Bleeding Kansas
bleeding kansasBleeding 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 1858. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a proxy war between Northerners and Southerners over the issue of slavery -
Caning of Charles Sumner
Charles sumnerThe inspiration for this clash came three days earlier when Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts antislavery Republican, addressed the Senate on the explosive issue of whether Kansas should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state. A rep. names Preston books then got mad and smashed his cane into Sumners head and died -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred scottwas a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent brought into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and could never be U.S. citizens. Despite the fact that the decision is no longer "jurisprudentially important," it nevertheless had, and continues to have, lasting cultural and historical ramification/implications. -
John Brown's Raid
John Brownwas 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. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him when he attacked the armory, but Tubman was sick and Douglass knew it would fail
