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1846 Wilmot Proviso
One of the major events leading to the American Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed lands in south Texas and New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. -
1848 Free-Soil Party
Third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. -
1849 President Taylor
The 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass. Taylor was the last President to hold slaves while in office, and the second and also last Whig to win a presidential election. He was the second president to die in office. -
The Compromise of 1850
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. Drafted by Whig Henry Clay and brokered by Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas. It avoided secession or civil war and reduced sectional conflict for four years. -
Fugitive Slave Act
Passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. Was one of the most controversial acts of the 1850 compromise! It declared that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters. -
1852 Uncle Tom’s 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. -
1854 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 if they would allow slavery within each territory. -
1856 Senator Charles Sumner Speech
An American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, working to punish the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen. -
1856 John C. Fremont
An American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. He became one of the first two U.S. Senators elected from the new state in 1850. He was soon bogged down with lawsuits over land claims between the dispossessions of various land owners during the Mexican-American War, and the explosion of Forty-Niners immigrating during the California Gold Rush. -
1856 James Buchanan
Was the 15th President of the United States. He is the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor. His niece Harriet Lane played the role as lady of the house.
