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The Compromise of 1850 & The Fugitive Slave Act
The compromise of 1850 had a fugitive slave act which allows officials to arrest any person accused of being a runaway slave, denied fugitives the right to a trial, and required all citizens to help capture runaway slaves. Since this forced Northerners to support the slave system many northerners were angry. The gap between Northerners and Southerners, and those “free” or “slave” states, was widening- and soon would lead to the start of the Civil War. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The controversial bill raises the possibility that slavery could be extended into territories where it had once been banned. It’s passage intensified the bitter debate over slavery in the US, which would later explode into the Civil War. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas demonstrated that armed conflict over slavery was unavoidable. It’s severity made National headlines, which suggested to the American people that the sectional disputes were unlikely to be resolved without bloodshed, and it therefore acted as a pre-face to the American Civil War. -
Preston Brooks V.S. Charles Sumner
In 1856, Representative Brooks, a Democrat from South Carolina, attacked Senator Charles Sumner, a Republican from Massachusetts, with a walking cane. The event became known as The Caning of Charles Sumner, and widely believed to be one of the events that led the American Civil War. -
Dred Scott V. Sandford
Sanford, was a decade – long fight for freedom by a black enslaved man named Dred Scott. The case persisted through several courts in ultimately reach the US Supreme Court, where decision incensed abolitionist, gave momentum to the anti-slavery movement and served as a stepping stone to the Civil War. -
Lincoln- Douglas Debates
Douglas repeatedly attacked Lincoln’s supposed radical view on race, claiming that his opponent would not only grant citizenship rights to freed slaves but allow black men to marry white women (an idea that horrified many white Americans) and that his views would put the nation on an inevitable path to war. -
John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry
Although the raid failed, it inflared sectional tensions in raised the steaks for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further accommodations between north and south nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War. -
The Election of Abraham Lincoln
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was a reflection that the southern states have lost their influence and power, and it was the first in the series of events that led to the Civil War. Due to the exclusion of the southern states from the system, they opted for secession, A decision that led to war.