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Compromise of 1850
It accomplished most of what Clay had wanted.Henry Clay proposed it. It made California enter the union as a free state, and made the rest of the Mexico Cession divide into two territories that were Utha and New Mexico. -
Fugitive Slave Act
made it a federal crime to help runaway slaves. The act even let officials arrest reunaway in areas where slavery was illegal. Under the new law, slaveholders and their agents could take suspencted fugitive slaves before U.S. commissioners. They would then try to prove ownership through documents or through the testimony of white witnesses. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
it was a powerful antislavery novel was written byHarriet Beecher Stowe. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 greatly angered Stowe, so she decided to write a book that would show northerners what slavery was really like. -
kansas-Nabraska Act
The Kansas-Nebrask Act was an 1854 bill that mandated "popular sovereignty"--allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state's borders. Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas--Abraham Lincoln's opponent in the influential Lincoln-Douglas debates--the bill overturned the Missouri Compromise's use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. The conflicts that arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act's p -
John Brown's Raid
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who believed in the violent overthrow of the slavery system. During the Bleeding Kansas conflicts, Brown and his sons led attacks on pro-slavery residents. Justifying his actions as the will of God, Brown soon became a hero in the eyes of Northern extremists and was quick to capitalize on his growing reputation. By early 1858, he had succeeded in enlisting a small "army" of insurrectionists whose mission was to foment rebellion among the slaves. -
Election of 1860
Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.
