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Wilmot Proviso
• No slavery is allowed in the newly acquired lands from the Mexican-American War
• Although the bill was not passed, it got people thinking about whether slavery was a good thing; The South thinks that the North is 'out to get them' -
Compromise of 1850
• Consisted of laws making California a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico dispute in the former's favor, ending the slave trade in Washington D.C., and making it easier for Southerners to recover fugitive slaves; Henry Clay saves the day
• All five laws passed, and the compromise allowed Congress to avoid sectional and slavery issues for many years -
Fugitive Slave Act
• A pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of fugitive slaves within the Unites States
• It was passed due to the resistance of the first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, only now with harsher punishments for aiding runaway slaves; Citizens are questioning why this Act was imposed even after much resistance -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in a very successful effort to help sway more people to the abolition reform; Over 300,000 copies were sold in the North alone
• The Northerners became aware of the horrors of slavery on a personal level, and the Southerners met the book with outrage and branded it 'an irresponsible book of distortions and overstatements' -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• A bill that mandated 'popular sovereignty', allowing settlers to decide whether a new state can have slavery or not in it's borders
• This bill became part of sectionalism and railroad building, splitting two huge political parties and helping to create another one, and worsening North-South relations -
'Bleeding Kansas'
• A term used to describe the period of violence (from 1854-1857) during settling in the Kansas territory
• Due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, two rival governments were established-the proslavery Missourians, and the antislavery groups; They fought over this issue with violence and bloodshed -
Dred Scott Case
• The Dred Scott decision was one of the biggest events leading to the Civil War; Dred Scott lived in a free state with his owner, and thought that he should get citizenship for staying in a free state for so long, but the court's decision was that no black could gain U.S. Citizenship
• All abolitionists were appalled and enraged by this decision, and heightened the North-South tensions -
Lincoln-Douglass Debates
• The seven debates discussed between Stephen A. Douglass and Abraham Lincoln about slavery and states' rights; Douglass says that states should decide if slaves are allowed, and Lincoln says that slavery should stop spreading
• The debates attracted national attention, Douglass being the spokesperson of the Democratic Party, and Lincoln running for Douglass's Senate seat as a Republican; It continued to influence political discourse -
Harper's Ferry
• The U.S. military arsenal at Harper's Ferry was the target of some abolitionists led by John Brown
• Despite being a failed attempt to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia, it increased Southerners' fears of a slave rebellion and increased tensions between the North and South even further -
Election of 1860
• The Democratic Party split into three groups, each vying for control of the party and having different ideas of how to deal with slavery; Abraham Lincoln won with most of the electoral votes, but he got less than 40% of the popular vote
• As a result, South Carolina seceded from the U.S. and soon,any other slave states like Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi followed, forming the Confederate States of America -
Fort Sumter
• Fort Sumter was an island fortification in South Carolina; Abraham Lincoln announced plans to resupply the fort, and Confederate general P.G.T. Beaurguard bombarded Fort Sumter and took control of it
• These were the first shots fired, and started the Civil War
