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1850: Compromise of 1850 led to California joining the Union as a free state, the territories of New Mexico and Utah are organized with no restrictions on slavery, slave trading is abolished in the District of Columbia effective January 1851 and the Fugit
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1852:Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin as a response to the pro-slavery movement.
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1854:The Kansas-Nebraska Act passes Congress and thus overturns the Missouri Compromise opening the Northern territory to slavery
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1855: Kansas prepares for doreder Ruffians, this created the violent attacked.
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1856:Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner delivers a speech attacking slavery supporters in the Senate.
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1847:The Supreme Court rules in Scott v. Sandford that blacks are not U.S. citizens, and slaveholders have the right to take existing slaves into free areas of the county.
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Tariff of 1857 lowering rates to the lowest level since 1812 to 20%, this is very unpopular in the North and praised in the South.
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Minnesota becomes the thirty second state and enters the Union as a free state in 1858.
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Oregon becomes the thirty third state and enters the Union as a free state in 1859.
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John Brown attacks Harpers Ferry, Robert E. Lee, then a Federal Army regular leads the troops and captures Brown. John Brown and two of the black members of his band were hanged.
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The results of the 1860 census show a total population of 31,183,582 including 3,950,528 slaves or 13% of the population. Slaves equal 2% of the population in what would be Northern Aligned States and 39% in Southern Aligned States.
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1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president. Lincoln received 40% of the popular vote and won 59% of the Electoral votes. He was not even on the ballot in the deep south.
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On December 26th U.S. Major-General Robert Anderson moves his troops from Ft. Moultrie, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Ft. Sumter.
