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Enacted in 1820 to maintain the balance of power in congress, the Missouri compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and marine as a free state -
Nat Turner's Rebellion ,also known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton county , Virginia, in August 1931,led by Nat Turner. the rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. -
The siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. -
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención estadounidense en México, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 -
In behalf of anti-slavery forces throughout the country, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania named David Wilmot offered an amendment (August 8, 1846) to the bill forbidding slavery in the new territory, thus precipitating bitter national debate in an atmosphere of heightening sectional conflict. -
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was part of the Compromise of 1850. The act required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War -
It became law on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. -
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. -
On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott case, which had a direct impact on the coming of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's presidency four years later. The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford was one of the most controversial decisions in the court's history -
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for, or Tragic Prelude to, the Civil War. -
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 6, 1860. -
Charleston Mercury on November 3, 1860. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the federal Union on December 20, 1860. -
The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized state in North America that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised U.S. states that declared secession from the United States and fought against the Union during the American Civil War. -
After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina's secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. -
The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion into the North and led Abraham Lincoln to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. -
The Gettysburg campaign was a military invasion of Pennsylvania by the main Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee in summer 1863. The Union won a decisive victory at Gettysburg, July 1–3, with heavy casualties on both sides. Lee managed to escape back to Virginia with most of his army. -
On April 9, 1865, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia signaled the end of the nation's largest war. Two important questions about its future were answered.