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The Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was a United States federal statute devised by Henry Clay. It regulated slavery in the country's western territories by prohibiting slaves in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nathanial Turner was a black American slave who led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history. Spreading terror throughout the white South, his action set off a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of slaves and stiffened pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist convictions that persisted in that region until the American Civil War. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War was an armed conflict between the USA and the United Mexican States. It followed in the wake of the annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory. The Texas annexation arose a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande. The war resulted in the United States’ acquisition of more than 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory extending westward from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean. -
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War. It passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the South had greater representation. It was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the House and failed in the Senate. -
Free Soil Party
The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised an economically superior system to slavery. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was five separate bills passed by the United States Congress, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War.The compromise, drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas, reduced conflict. Controversy became over the Fugitive Slave provision. -
Fugitive Slave Law
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. It required that all escaped slaves were to be captured, and to be returned to their masters and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.The book was written to show the evils of slavery, by telling a story how a slave was whipped to death. The south said the book was full of lies, and none of it was true. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make a Transcontinental Railroad. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas is used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraksa Act overturned the Missouri Compromise’s use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory and instead, using the principle of popular sovereignty. Pro-slavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. -
Pottowatmie Creek Killings
The Pottawatomie killing occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas.This and several other events lead to Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas was largely brought about by the Missouri Compromise and Kansas–Nebraska Act. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott Decision, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. Whether enslaved or free, they could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. -
Lincoln-Douglass Debate
The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (also known as The Great Debates of 1858) were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Their debates focused on slavery and the morals, values, and logic behind it. -
Raid On Harper's Ferry
The Raid on Harper's Ferry was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 21 men in his party, but was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines. Colonel Robert E. Lee, USA, was in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal. -
Election of 1860
United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on November 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. In the face of a divided opposition, the Newly created Republican Party secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South.
