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American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society was one of the most prominent abolitionist organizations in the United States of America during the early nineteenth century--played a significant role in furthering the cause of abolition during the decades leading up to the Civil War. The majority of abolitionists worked with moderate antislavery Northerners to create the Republican Party. By 1860, most abolitionists endorsed the election of Abraham Lincoln as a means of battling slavery. -
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny was a belief that was widely held that the destiny of American settlers was to expand and move across the continent; it was God-given. Manifest Destiny was also the driving force responsible for changing the face of American history. It was the philosophy that created a nation; it brought money, land, resources, and a strengthened economy to the Americans. The concept is still at the heart of much U.S. foreign policy, American pop culture, and contemporary political debate. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War, waged between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848, helped to fulfill America's "manifest destiny" to expand its territory across the entire North American continent. The Mexican-American War reopened the slavery-extension issue, which divided the North and South and which had been largely dormant since the Missouri Compromise. The massive territories gained during the war make up a large percentage of present-day United States. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 is composed of five statues enacted in September of 1850. The acts called for the admission of California as a “free state,” provided for a territorial government for Utah and New Mexico, established a boundary between Texas and the United States, called for the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, DC, and amended the Fugitive Slave Act. It also temporarily calmed tensions that existed between the North, or the free states, and the South, or the slave states. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. It represented a pivotal moment in American history which forever changed American politics and contributed to the coming of the American Civil War.
