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Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a congressional agreement that regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for thirty years. Under the agreement, the territory of Missouri was admitted as a slave state, the territory of Maine was admitted as a free state, and the boundaries of slavery were limited to the same latitude as the southern boundary of Missouri. -
nullification
The American Revolution (1775–1783), in which Americans declared themselves independent of Great Britain, was a practical extension of Enlightenment political thought. So was the first government of the United States, the Articles of Confederation,which had no strong central government and reserved most major statutory power for the individual states. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 is the name given to a series of congressional statutes enacted in September 1850 in an attempt to resolve longstanding disputes over slavery. The debate over slavery intensified in 1849 when California applied for admission to the Union as a free state. -
Kansas/Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the third and last of the series of compromises enacted before the u.s. civil war in an attempt to resolve the question of whether slavery should be permitted in the western territories. -
Dred Scott Case
Dred Scott was a slave owned by an army surgeon, John Emerson, who resided in Missouri. In 1836 Emerson took Scott to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, but then was a territory in which slavery had been expressly forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. -
Election of 1860