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Missouri Compromise
the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
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Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion, also known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. -
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Gag Rule
On this date, during the 24th Congress (1835–1837), the U.S. House of Representatives instituted the “gag rule,” the first instance of what would become a traditional practice forbidding the House from considering anti-slavery petitions. -
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Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War (1846-48). -
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Harriet Tubman escapes slavery
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head -
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Compromise of 1850
As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah. -
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin published
Uncle Tom's Cabin, in full Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in serialized form in the United States in 1851–52 and in book form in 1852. -
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. -
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Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between proslavery and antislavery forces following the creation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854. In all, some 55 people were killed between 1855 and 1859 -
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Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott was a slave who was owned by John Emerson of Missouri. -
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates
From August to October of 1858, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, took on the incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas in a series of seven debates. -
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John Brown raids Harpers Ferry
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery. -
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Abraham Lincoln elected
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 6, 1860.