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Compromise of 1850
Was a package of five bills, passed in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). -
1850 Fugitive Slave Act
Description- A compromise of 1850 between Southeren slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. Causes- It declared that all runaway slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters. -
Bleeding Kansas
Also know as the Border War, was a series of violent political confrontations involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the neighboring towns of Missouri between 1854 and 1861. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois -
Lecompton Constitution
It was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas.The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane.The territorial legislature, consisting mostly of slave-owners, met at the designated capital of Lecompton in September 1857 to produce a rival document. -
“Beecher’s Bibles”
Descripton- A name that was given to the Breech loading Sharps Rifles that were supplied to the anti-slavery immigrants in Kansas. Causes- People starting to rebel and they started to arm them selves. -
Brooks Sumner Incident
Senator Sumner specifically mentioned Senator Andrew Butler, of South Carolina in the speech because of his involvement with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Butler’s nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks, who had taken the speech particularly personally, entered the Senate Chamber. He proceeded to attack Senator Sumner with a walking stick. Brooks, who was accompanied at the time by Congressman Laurence Keitt of South Carolina and Congressman Henry Edmundson of Virginia, assaulted Sumner “with a considera -
Pottawatomie Massacre
In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence (Kansas) by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the American Civil War, which came to be known collectively as Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas was due to the Missouri Compromise and Kansas–Nebraska Act. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
They were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and the incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. -
Freeport Doctrine
Stephen Douglas's answer to Lincoln's question, in which he explained that slavery could only exist where there was a slave code. If a state did not pass the necessary laws to protect slavery, then they could not have slavery exist there. -
Dred Scott
He was as an African-American slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as "the Dred Scott Decision." His case was based on the fact that although he and his wife Harriet Scott were slaves, -
John Browns Raid on Harpers Ferry
An attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. -
Abraham Lincoln wins election
The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. The North Secured enough votes to put in Abraham as a Republican. -
Lecompton Constitution
Was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas.The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates.
