The Crucial Decade

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    The Crucial Decade

  • Compromise of 1850

    Compromise that addmitted California as a free state, made the Fugitive Slave Act more strict, banned the slave trade in D.C., and introduced popular sovereignity in New Mexico and Utah.
  • Millard Fillmore

    Millard Fillmore becomes President after Zachary Taylor is killed in the Mexican War.
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe about a slave being killed for helping another slave escape via the underground railroad.
  • Franklin Pierce

    Franklin Pierce secedes Millard Fillmore as the 14th President of the United States
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • Lincoln's Speech on Kansas-Nebraska Act

    Lincoln speaks about the Kansas-Nebraska Ac and the possible expanision of slavery into the new territories
  • Border Ruffians in Lecompton

  • Free Soilers in Topeka

  • The Sack of Lawrence

  • Caning of Charles Sumner

  • Pottawatomie Creek Massacre

    violence between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas over popular sovereignity. Violence known as "Bleeding Kansas."
  • James Buchanon

    James Buchanon secedes Franklin Pierce becoming the 15th President of the United States
  • Dred Scott Decision

    Buchanon forces Supreme Court to make a decision of slavery. It is decided that slaves are property and that Congress does not have the power to regulate slavery in territories
  • Lincoln's "House Divided Speech"

    Lincoln gave a speech stating that the United States can't survive as half free-half slave
  • Lincoln-Douglas Debates

    Abraham Linocln held a series of debates with Stephen Douglas during his campaign for Illinois senate. Many topics were covered, especially the expansion of slavery. Lincoln lost the senate but eventually won the Presidency against Douglas
  • Address at Cooper Institute

    Lincoln gives another speech at the Cooper Institute in New York
  • Election of 1860

    Abraham Lincoln defeats Stephen A. Douglas to become the 16th President of the United States
  • Seccession of South Carolina

    South Carolina seceded before Abrahamn Lincoln was even inagurated, to be followed by the other Southern states in the upcoming months
  • Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

    In Lincoln's First Inaugural Adress he makes it known that he will not instigate a war with the South, he will only defend the North.