-
The congress passed a law that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while banning slavery from the remaining. Louisiana Purchase lands located north. -
Nat Turner led a rebellion of enslaved people. His action set off a massacre of up to 200 Black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people
-
The House passed a resolution that automatically postponed action on all petitions relating to slavery without hearing them. Stricter versions of this gag rule passed in succeeding Congresses -
Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War. -
Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 and then risked her life to lead other enslaved people to freedom.
-
Part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington D.C. was abolished -
Stowe encountered fugitive enslaved people and the Underground Railroad. Later she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws.
-
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders or land they were living in. -
Bleeding Kansas describes the period of repeated outbreaks of violent guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. -
The US Supreme Court upheld slavery in US territories, denied the legality of black citizenship in America, and declared the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. -
Lincoln argued against the spread of slavery while Douglas maintained that each territory should have the right to decide whether it would become free or allow slavery.
-
The soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons.
-
This election resulted in the first Republican president being elected. The United States had become increasingly sectionally divided during the 1850s, primarily over extending slavery into the Western territories