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The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress. There were reasons why this event caused the Civil War. It allowed California to enter the Union as a free state. Congress also abolished slave trade in Washington D.C and, south tried to prevent the Wilmot Proviso which was a bill that would ban slavery in new territories. -
The Jerry Rescue
An angry mob takes Jerry McHenry, an escaped slave, from the jail in Syracuse and helps him flee to Canada. Earlier in 1851, Secretary of State Daniel Webster had warned that the Fugitive Slave law would be enforced even here in Syracuse in the midst of the next Anti-Slavery Convention. The arrest was considered a message that the locally unpopular law would be seriously enforced by federal authorities -
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Stowe was an abolitionists and author who wrote a book about a slave owner who named a slave Uncle Tom. The southeners refused to publish this book, but it was already published. The book was called "Uncle Tom's Cabin". This book made southeners very angry, and another reason the south did not think the same way as the northern states do. -
Stephan A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from Brandon, Vermont and the designer of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. This bill organized people to move out to the move out to the mid-west to work on land and vote for slavery or aginst it. Committee on Territories, chaired by Stephen Douglas, begins hearings on the Nebraska statehood bill passed by the U. S. House. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The bill that would become the Kansas-Nebraska Act is printed for the first time. The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, by allowing white male settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. This is why this event lead to the Civil War. -
Violence disrupts first Kansas election
In 1855, groups of Missouri citizens invaded the Kansas territory in order to ensure the election of a pro-slavery legislature. This act was only one in a series of actions, both violent and non-violent, that would be called the Border War, or Bloody Kansas.The trouble began in 1854 with passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the legislation which created the two territories. -
Crime Against Kansas
On May 20, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner presented his "Crime against Kansas" speech in the U.S. Senate, using harsh language to attack supporters of slavery, including Sen. Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. A few days later, Congressman Preston Brooks, one of Butler’s relatives, violently assaulted Sumner with a cane. The incident outraged Northerners, who saw it as an attack on free speech, while Southerners regarded Brooks as a hero, defending family honor. -
Dred Scott Decision
In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that slaves were not citizens, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Dred Scott, although he had once resided in a free state, would remain a slave. -
Marais des Cygnes Massacre, Kan.
As political infighting continued with the Lecompton and Leavenworth constitutions, violence flared around Fort Scott. Charles A. Hamilton, a veteran of the Kansas troubles since moving there from Georgia in 1855, had both threatened and been threatened by Free State settlers. On May 19, he proposed to lead an expedition of proslavery men to strike a blow against his enemies. -
John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry, Va.
John Brown left Kansas in early 1859 with a bold plan to attack the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His scheme to destroy slavery involved seizing the arsenal’s thousands of weapons and using them to arm escaped slaves. On the night of October 16, Brown and his 18 followers successfully captured the arsenal and took several locals as hostages. -
South Carolina seceded from the Union
Following Abraham Lincoln’s election, a convention met in Columbia, South Carolina, to consider secession. The members soon moved to Charleston, however, and on the afternoon of December 20, the convention, without debate and by a vote of 169 to 0, declared that “the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States” was dissolved.
