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Who was Nat Turner and how did his action influence slavery?
Nat Turner was a slave who led a failed 1831 slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. That attempt became a reference to the justification for the Civil War. In 1831, Nat Turner was sold to plantation owner and slaveholder Joseph Travis. In February of that year, an eclipse of the sun convinced Turner that it was a sign from God to start an insurrection, and lead his people out of slavery. -
Kansas - Nebraska Act and why did Stephen Douglas propose it?
To gain the southerners' support, Douglas proposed creating two territories in the area–Kansas and Nebraska–and repealing the Missouri Compromise line. The question of whether the territories would be slave or free would be left to the settlers under Douglas's principle of popular sovereignty. -
Who was John Brown and how did his raids increase tensions?
Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. -
Fugitive Slave Act.
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. -
Why did violence break out in Kansas in the mid-1850s earning it the nickname “Bleeding Kansas”
Bleeding Kansas is the term used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty, decreed that the residents would determine whether the area became a free state or a slave state. -
Mexican American War?
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and what were the terms?
The war officially ended with the February 2, 1848, signing in Mexico of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. -
Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve 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. ... In 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. -
Who was Dred Scott and what did he have to do with the U.S. Supreme Court and the spread of slavery?
Dred Scott was the slave of an army physician who had lived in the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. Upon returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had once lived in a free territory. His case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This decision would affect not only Dred Scott and his family, but also the larger question of whether Congress could regulate the spread of slavery. -
How did Texas become a state of the United States?
In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States of America, becoming the 28th U.S. state. Border disputes between the new state and Mexico, which had never recognized Texas independence and still considered the area a renegade Mexican state, led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).
