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Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed in the U.S. which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regrding the status of terriroties acquired during the Mexican-American War. -
Fugitive Slave Law
The Fugitive Slave Law/Act was passed by the U.S. Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850. It required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin publication
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It featured the character Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave. It depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and helped fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 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 while male settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. It was designed by Stephen Douglas. Its initial purpose was to open up new farms and make a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. -
Birth of the Republican Party
Founded in the Northern states by ant-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the Democratic Party and the Know Nothing Party. The main cause was the opposton to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. -
Sumner attacks Brooks in Senate
Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beat Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rose over the expansion of slavery. Sumner gave a two-day speech where he blasted three of his colleagues, one of which was Andrew Butler, Brooks cousin. He wanted to defend his honor and he became a hero in the south. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott v. Sanford was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Courth held that African Americans, whether enslaved for free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the U.S. Dred Scott, an enslaved African American man who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. -
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John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt by the white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee, -
Election of 1860
The U.S. presidential election of 1860 served as the immediate triggger for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South. Lincoln ran against John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas. -
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Shots fired at Fort Sumter, SC
After South Carolina and other southern states withdrew from the Union, they formed a new nation called the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln disagreed with their right to secede and would not remove U.S. troops from South Carolina defending a base in Charleston Harbor called Fort Sumter. Confederate leaders ordered an attack on April 12th, 1861, where a shell exploded above Fort Sumter. It was the first shot fired in the American Civil War.
