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Fugitive Slave Law
A pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States. It authorized local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. -
Missouri Compromise
Congress passed a bill granting Missouri statehood as a slave state under the condition that slavery was to be forever prohibited in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. -
Wilmot Proviso
An amendment to Democratic President James K. Polk's appropriation bill for the funding of newly acquired territories. The Proviso also prohibited the expansion of slavery into any territory acquired by the United States from Mexico as a result of a settlement in the Mexican-American War. -
The 31st Congress of 1849
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The Compromise
The Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
While living in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad. Later, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. -
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman became famous as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad during the turbulent 1850s. Born a slave on Maryland’s eastern shore, she endured the harsh existence of a field hand, including brutal beatings. In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and family behind in order to escape. Despite a bounty on her head, she returned to the South at least 19 times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, sp -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
This act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing white male settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of the state of Missouri between 1854 and 1861. -
Beating of Senator Charles Sumner
As North-South tensions heightened, so did Sumner’s rhetoric. In his Crime against Kansas speech, delivered in May 1856, he lambasted southern efforts to extend slavery into Kansas and attacked his colleague, Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. Shortly after that speech, Butler’s cousin, Congressman Preston Brooks, assaulted Sumner on the Senate floor. He spent three and a half years recovering from the beating. -
The Dred Scott Decision
On this day in 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, therebynegating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
Harpers Ferry
On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few slaves. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons. -
Election of 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 was the 19th quadrennial presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. -
South Carolina Secedes from the Union
South Carolina threatened separation when the Continental Congress sought to tax all the colonies on the basis of a total population count that would include slaves. Secession in this instance and throughout the antebellum period came to mean the assertion of minority sectional interests against what was perceived to be a hostile or indifferent majority.
