-
Period: to
civil war
-
The Missouri Compromise "A Balance of Power"
on March 3, 1820, after Maine petitioned Congress for statehood. Both states were admitted, a free Maine and a slave Missouri, and the balance of power in Congress was maintained as before, postponing the inevitable showdown for another generation. In an attempt to address the issue of the further spread of slavery, however, the Missouri Compromise stipulated that all the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri, except Missouri, would be free, and the territory b -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso created great bitterness between North and South and helped crystallize the conflict over the extension of slavery. In the election of 1848 the terms of the Wilmot Proviso, a definite challenge to proslavery groups, were ignored by the Whig and Democratic parties but were adopted by the Free-Soil party. Later the Republican party also favored excluding slavery from new territories Read more: Wilmot Proviso | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/wilmot -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 generated positive and negative results. Its passage quieted sectional animosities for a few years (until the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854) and held off the Civil War for about 10 years. On the other hand, Northerners were so enraged by the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act that it was impossible to strike future compromises. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30 -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas” was a term used by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune to describe the violent hostilities between pro and antislavery forces in the Kansas territory during the mid and late 1850s Known by some as “Bloody Kansas” or the “Border War”, these tragic events helped to inspire the Civil War and the dark times which followed which included massacres, political uprisings, murders, and shadow governments.
