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federally sanctioned slave code
Congress extended Virginia and Maryland slavery laws to the District of Columbia, establishing a federally sanctioned slave code. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase added Creoles and French settlers to the U.S. population. Congress approved the Louisiana Purchase from France for $15 million, which virtually doubled the country’s land size. It also re-ignited controversy over the spread of slavery in the territory. -
Importing of slaves stopped
Congress banned the importation of slaves into the U.S., although smuggling continued in some parts of the South. Once the transatlantic slave trade was prohibited, domestic slave trading throughout the South increased. -
Congress
Congress was embroiled in the debate over how to divide the newly acquired territories into slave and free states -
Blacks added to cencus
The USA census added free colored persons to its racial categories. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise brought Missouri and Maine into the Union. By this time more than 20,000 Indians lived in virtual slavery on California missions. The same year, Congress made trade in foreign slaves an act of piracy. -
Missouri entered as a state
Missouri entered the Union as the 24th state and a slave-holding state, maintaining the balance of slave and free states -
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay presented a bill that would become known as the Compromise of 1850 -
Californua as a state
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state; voters in New Mexico and Utah territories would decide whether they would be slave or free upon applying for statehood -
Californua as a state
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state; voters in New Mexico and Utah territories would decide whether they would be slave or free upon applying for statehood -
Fugitive Slave act
The new Fugitive Slave Act, also passed in 1850, made the federal government responsible for apprehending fugitive slaves in the North, and sending them back to the South.