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The Missouri Compromise
Missouri’s application for statehood as a slave state sparked a bitter national debate. The addition of pro-slavery Missouri legislators would give the pro-slavery faction a Congressional majority. Congress agreed that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state, preserving the Congressional balance. A line was also drawn through the unincorporated western territories along the 36⁰30 parallel, dividing north and south as free and slave. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
A slave named Nat Turner ignited an uprising that spread through several plantations in southern Virginia. Turner and approximately seventy others killed around sixty white people. Militia and artillery suppressed the rebellion after two days of terror. Virginia lawmakers reacted to the crisis by rolling back what few civil rights slaves and free black people possessed at the time. Education was prohibited and the right to assemble was severely limited. -
Wilmot Provisio
If passed, the Proviso would have outlawed slavery in territory acquired by the United States as a result of the war, which included most of the Southwest and extended all the way to California. Wilmot spent two years fighting for his bill. All attempts failed. Nevertheless, the intensity of the debate surrounding the Proviso prompted the first serious discussions of secession. -
Compromise of 1850
With national relations soured by the debate over the Wilmot Proviso, senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas managed to broker a shaky accord with the Compromise of 1850. The compromise prevented further territorial expansion of slavery while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which compelled Northerners to seize and return escaped slaves to the South. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional exploration of slave life was a cultural sensation. Northerners felt as if their eyes had been opened to the horrors of slavery, while Southerners protested that Stowe’s work was slanderous. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second-best-selling book in America in the 19th century, second only to the Bible. Its popularity brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of legislative conflict and widened the division of the US. -
Dred Scott v Sanford
Dred Scott was a Virginia slave who tried to sue for his freedom in court. The case eventually rose to the level of the Supreme Court, where the justices found that, as a slave, Dred Scott was a piece of property that had none of the legal rights or recognitions afforded to a human being. -
The Lincoln/Duglas Debates
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of formal political debates between the challenger, Abraham Lincoln, and the incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, in a campaign for one of Illinois' two United States Senate seats. Although Lincoln lost the election, these debates launched him into national prominence which eventually led to his election as President of the United States.
