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An armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States stemming from the United States’ annexation of Texas in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande
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a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada
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Five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War.
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Required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate.
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created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska
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A series of violent civil confrontations in the United States emerged from a political debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas
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anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party
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Charles Sumner gave a two day speech on the Senate floor. He denounced the South for crimes against Kansas and singled out Senator Andrew Brooks of South Carolina for extra abuse. Brooks beat Sumner over the head with his cane, severely crippling him.
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financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy
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the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas
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landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on U.S. labor law and constitutional law
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a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.
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a raid on Harper’s Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia
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Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge
