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VA & KY Resolutions
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798-1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. The resolutions argued that the states had the right and the duty to declare unconstitutional acts of Congress that were unauthorized by the Constitution. In doing so, they argued for states' rights and strict interpretation of the Constitution -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was a United States federal statute devised by Henry Clay that regulated slavery in the country's western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory (north of the parallel 36°30′), except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. -
Tariff of Abominations
The Tariff of Abominations was the name given by its southern opponents to the Tariff of 1828, which was passed by Congress on May 19, 1828. The controversial 1828 Tariff of Abominations was designed to protect American industry from cheaper British commodities. It eventually led up to the Nullification Crisis. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin which changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, a system that treated people as property. It demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War -
Formation of the Know Nothing Party
The Know-Nothing party was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and especially anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the 1840s. Members, when asked about their nativist organizations, were supposed to reply that they knew nothing (hence the name). -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War. Soon after the war began, President James K. Polk sought the appropriation of $2 million as part of a bill to negotiate the terms of a treaty. -
Formation of the Free Soil Party
Free-Soil Party was a minor but influential political party in the pre-Civil War period of American history that opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and reduce the rise of war between the North and South U.S. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
The Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave states and the free northern states. This was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It required that all escaped slaves to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. -
Nullification Crisis
The Nullification Crisis arose in the early 1830s when leaders of South Carolina (John Calhoon) advanced the idea that a state did not have to follow a federal law and could nullify the law. -
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses instituted by Harriet Tubman and used by 19th-century enslaved people in efforts to escape to free states with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. -
Bleeding Kansas (Kansas Nebraska Act)
This act allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. -
Brooks-Sumner Fight
Charles Sumner delivered a two day log speech to the Senate, denouncing the south for crimes against Kansas and singled out senator Andrew Brooks of SC. Brooks beat Sumner over the head with his cane, crippling him severely. -
Election of 1856
The United States presidential election of 1856 was an unusually heated election campaign that led to the election of James Buchanan, the ambassador to the United Kingdom. Republican candidate John C. Frémont condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and crusaded against the Slave Power and the expansion of slavery, while Democrat James Buchanan warned that the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war. -
Dred Scott Case
The United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks, slaves as well as free, could never become citizens of the USA. The court also declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin before moving back to the slave state of Missouri, had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted his freedom. -
LeCompton Constitution
The Lecompton Constitution was the second constitution drafted for Kansas Territory and was written by proslavery supporters. The document permitted slavery (Article VII), excluded free blacks from living in Kansas, and allowed only male citizens of the United States to vote. -
John Brown's Raid
John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. His plan was to seize the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area, and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. -
Election of 1860
United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on Nov. 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. Lincoln being elected was one of the direct causes of the Civil War. -
SC secedes from the Union
South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States. James Buchanan, the United States president, declared the ordinance illegal but did not act to stop it. -
Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of U.S. Fort Sumter, near Charleston, SC by the Confederates, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the U.S. Army that triggered the American Civil War.
