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Dred scott decision
Born in Virginia c. 1800, Dred Scott came to St. Louis in 1830. In the next year or two John Emerson, an army physician who had settled in St. Louis, acquired him. Emerson took Scott to various places, including Illinois and the Wisconsin territory, where the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, respectively, had prohibited slavery. In 1836, Dred Scott married another slave, Harriet. Shortly thereafter the Scotts joined Emerson and his wife, Irene, in Louisiana. Despi -
wilmot proviso
After an earlier attempt to acquire Texas by treaty had failed to receive the necessary two-thirds approval of the Senate, the United States annexed the Republic of Texas by a joint resolution of Congress that required simply a majority vote in each house of Congress. President John Tyler signed the bill on March 1, 1845 on the last day of his presidency.[clarification needed] As many expected, the annexation led to war with Mexico. After the capture of New Mexico and California in the first pha -
uncle tom's cabin
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.[2][3][4] Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century[5] and the second best-selling book of tha -
compromise of 1850
The 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 Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and brokered by Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas, avoided secession or civil war and reduced sectional conflict for four years. -
harpper's ferry
Douglas, a Democrat, was the incumbent Senator, having been elected in 1847. He had chaired the Senate Committee on Territories. He helped enact the Compromise of 1850. Douglas then was a proponent of Popular Sovereignty, and was responsible for the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The legislation led to the violence in Kansas, hence the name "Bleeding Kansas" Lincoln was a relative unknown at the beginning of the debates. In contrast to Douglas' Popular Sovereignty stance, Lincoln stated that the -
kansas-nebraska act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 (10 Stat. 277) 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 whether 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 -
lincoln-douglass debates
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the aftermath of his victory in the 1860 presidenti -
electin of 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election, held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues finally came to a head. As a result of conflicting regional interests, the Democratic Party broke into Northern and Southern -
bleeding kansaas
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 1861. 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 in the United States. The term -
fort sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, 1860, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surreptitiously moved his small command from the indefensible Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress
