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1846 was the first year of war, which led to the debate over the expansion of slavery and the Wilmot Proviso was the first round that led to the civil war. The of Guadalupe Hidalgo was negotiated by the American diplomat Nicholas Trist.
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California was admitted as a free state which added to the North's political power, but it also caused controversy over the New Fugitive slave law and provision for popular sovereignty.
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Enforcement of the new law in the North was sometimes forcibly resisted by antislavery Northerners. The enforcement of the Fugitive slave law drove a wedge between the North and the South.
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This was a loose network of free blacks and some abolitionists who helped escaped slaved reach freedom in the North or in Canada. It reached its height between 1850-1860
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Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beeder Stowe was published in 1852 about an enslaved man named Tom and his brutal white owner Simon Legree. Southerners condemned the "untruths" in the novel. The Impending Crisis of the South by Hinton R. Helper, published in 1857, used statistics to demonstrate to fellow Southerners that slavery weakened the economy.
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The senator of Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas, introduced a bill to divide the Nebraska territory into two parts ( Kansas and Nebraska territory) and allow settlers to decide whether to allow slavery or not.
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The Republican party was founded in 1854 in Wisconsin as the direct reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The party was made up of free-soil and anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats who were opposed to the spread of slavery.
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Pro-slavery forces attacked the free-soil town of Lawrence and killed 2 people. Days later, abolitionist John Brown killed 5 settlers at Pottawatomie Creek.
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Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner made intemperate remarks about South Carolina senator Andrew Butler. As a result of this, Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks, walked into the Senate chamber and beat Sumner over the head with a cane.
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Economic boom ended in 1857 which led to an increase in unemployment in the North. This led Southerners to believe plantation economy was superior and the Northern economy was not needed.
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Was a document that Buchanan asked congress to accept and admit Kansas as a slave state. They didn't because Democrats like Stephen Douglas, joined Republicans in rejecting the Lecompton Constitution.
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Supreme Court reached its decision in March of 1857 which decided against Scott because they claimed he didn't have the right to sue in Federal Court because he was an African American.
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In a debate in Illinois, Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred-Scott decision. Douglas responded that slavery could not exist in community if local citizens didn't pass laws maintaining it.
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In October of 1859 John Brown led a small band of followers in an attack on a federal arsenal at the Harpers Ferry with the goal to arm Virginia's slaves. This confirmed the Souths worst fears of radical abolitionism.
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Democratic Part represented the last hope for coaltion and compromise. Republicans drafted a platform that appealed to the economic self interest of North and Westerners. Lincoln ( Republican) won 180 electoral votes.
