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The Mexican War
The Mexican American war marked the first U.S armed conflict fought on foreign soil.President James K. Polk believed that the Untied States had a Manifest Destiny to spread across to the pacific ocean. The U.S. Congress authorizes President Polk’s declaration of war between the United States and Mexico, and the war begins. -
The Missouri Compromise
It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves. -
The Fugitive Slave Act
The Fugitive Slave act were a pair of federal laws that allowed the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. Those who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Widespread resistance to the 1793 law later led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Many Northern States passed special legislation's in an attempt to circumvent them, both laws were formally repealed by an act of Congress in 1864. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad. Later, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. -
Bleeding Kansas
In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. Pro-slavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. -
Charles Sumner is Attacked by Preston on the Floor of the Senate
Sumner persevered in his antislavery activities. In 1851, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Free-Lander. As North-South tensions heightened, so did Sumner’s rhetoric. In his Crime against Kansas speech, delivered in May 1856, he lambasted southern efforts to extend slavery into Kansas and attacked his colleague, Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. Shortly after that speech, Congressman Preston Brooks, assaulted Sumner on the Senate floor. -
The Dred Scott decision
Scott lost his case proving that he should be free because he had been held as a slave while living in a free state. The Court ruled that his petition could not be seen because he did not hold any property. But it went further, to state that even though he had been taken by his 'owner' into a free state, he was still a slave because slaves were to be considered property of their owners. This decision furthered the cause of abolitionists as they increased their efforts to fight against slavery. -
Lecompton Constitution Rejected
In 1857, the Lecompton Constitution was created allowing Kansas to be a slave state. Pro-slavery forces supported by President James Buchanan attempted to push through the Constitution for acceptance. However, there was enough opposition that in 1858 it was sent back to Kansas for a vote. Even though it delayed statehood, Kansas voters rejected the Constitution and Kansas became a free state. -
John Brown Raided Harper's Ferry
The U.S military arsenal at Harper's ferry was the target of an assault by an armed band of abolitionist led by John Brown. The raid was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the Mountains of Maryland and Virginia. -
Abraham Lincoln Was Elected President
Abraham's election that November pushed several Southern states to secede by the time of his inauguration in March in 1861, and the Civil War began barely a month later...
