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missouri compromosie
In 1818 settlers in Missouri requested admission to the Union. Northerners and Southerners disagreed, however, on whether Missouri should be admitted as a free state or a slave state. Congress passed a series of agreements in 1820–1821 known as the Missouri Compromise. Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. -
Missouri Compromise
In 1818 settlers in Missouri requested admission to the Union. Northerners and Southerners disagreed, whether Missouri should be admitted as a free state or a slave state. Congress passed agreements in 1820–1821 known as Missouri Compromise. Maine was admitted a free state and Missouri a slave state. The rest of Louisiana was split in two parts. The dividing line was set at 36°30´ north latitude. South of the line, slavery was legal. North of the line except in Missouri—slavery was banned. -
Santa Fe Trail
The settlers and traders who made the trek west used a series of old Native American trails as well as new routes. One of the busiest routes was the Santa Fe Trail, which stretched 780 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe in the Mexican province of New Mexico.Each spring from 1821 through the 1860s, American traders loaded their covered wagons with goods and set off toward Santa Fe. -
San Felipe de Austin
The main settlement of the colony was named San Felipe de Austin, in Stephen’s honor. By 1825, Austin had issued 297 land grants to the group that later became known as Texas’s Old Three Hundred. Each family received either 177 very inexpensive acres of farmland, or 4,428 acres for stock grazing, as well as a 10-year exemption from paying taxes. There were more than 20,000 Americans in Texas. -
Mexico Abolished Slavery
Despite peaceful cooperation between Anglos and Tejanos, differences over cultural issues intensified between Anglos and the Mexican government. The overwhelmingly Protestant Anglo settlers spoke English instead of Spanish. Furthermore, many of the settlers were Southerners, who had brought slaves with them to Texas. Mexico, which had abolished slavery in 1829, insisted in vain that the Texans free their slaves. -
Abolition
Forten’s unwavering belief that he was an American not only led him to oppose colonization—the effort to resettle free blacks in Africa—but also pushed him fervently to oppose slavery. Forten was joined in his opposition to slavery by a growing number of Americans in the 19th century. Abolition, the movement to abolish slavery, became the most important of a series of reform movements in America. -
The Liberator
William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp are the publishers of The Liberato. Garrison’s call for the immediate emancipation of slaves, support for that position had been limited. In the 1830s, however, that position gained support. Whites who opposed abolition hated Garrison. In 1835 a Boston mob paraded him through town at the end of a rope. Nevertheless, Garrison enjoyed widespread black support; three out of four early subscribers to The Liberator were African Americans. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
In August 1831, Turner and more than 50 followers attacked four
plantations and killed about 60 whites. Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. The Turner rebellion frightened and outraged slaveholders. In some states, people argued that the only way to prevent slave revolts was through emancipation. Others, however, chose to tighten restrictions on all African Americans to prevent them from plotting insurrections. -
Texas Revolution
After Santa Anna suspended local powers in Texas and other Mexican states, several rebellions broke out, including one that would be known as the Texas Revolution. -
stephen F. Austin goes to Jail
Meanwhile, Mexican politics had become increasingly unstable. Austin had traveled to Mexico City late in 1833 to present petitions to Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna for greater self government for Texas. While Austin was on his way home, Santa Anna had Austin imprisoned for inciting revolution. -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail stretched from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon. It was blazed in 1836 by two Methodist missionaries named Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. By driving their wagon as far as Fort Boise (near present-day Boise, Idaho), they proved that wagons could travel on the Oregon Trail. -
Manifest Destiny
The belief that the United States was ordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican and Native American territory. Many Americans also believed that this destiny was manifest, or obvious and inevitable. Most Americans had practical reasons for moving west. For settlers, the abundance of land was the greatest attraction. As the number of western settlers climbed, merchants and manufacturers followed, seeking new markets for their goods. -
Texas enters the United States
Most Texans hoped that the United States would annex their republic, but U.S. opinion divided along sectional lines. Northerners feared that the annexation of more slave territory would tip the uneasy balance in the Senate in favor of slave states—and prompt war with Mexico. The 1844 U.S. presidential campaign focused on westward expansion. The winner, James K. Polk, a slaveholder, firmly favored the annexation of Texas. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836. Initially, the United States declined to incorporate it into the union, largely because northern political interests were against the addition of a new slave state. The Mexican government was also encouraging border raids and warning that any attempt at annexation would lead to war. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
After about a year of fighting, Mexico conceded defeat. On February 2, 1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico agreed to the Rio Grande as the border between Texas and Mexico and ceded the New Mexico and California territories to the United States. United States agreed to pay $15 million for the Mexican cession, which included present day California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. -
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors was Harriet Tubman,
born a slave in Maryland in 1820 or 1821. In 1849, after Tubman’s
owner died, she heard rumors that she was about to be sold. Fearing this possibility, Tubman decided to make a break for freedom and succeeded in reaching Philadelphia. Shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman resolved to become a conductor on the Underground Railroad. -
Compromise of 1850
As the 31st Congress opened in December 1849,
the question of statehood for California topped the agenda. Of equal concern was the border dispute in which the slave state of Texas claimed the eastern half of the New Mexico Territory, where the issue of slavery had not yet been settled. As passions mounted, threats of Southern secession, the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union, became more frequent. -
Kansas Nebraska Act
The Compromise of 1850 had provided for popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah. To Senator Stephen Douglas, popular sovereignty seemed like an excellent way to decide whether slavery would be allowed in the Nebraska Territory. Senator Stephen Douglas was the one who proposed it. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Meanwhile, another woman brought the horrors
of slavery into the homes of a great many Americans. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which stressed that slavery was not just a political contest, but also a great moral struggle. As a young girl, Stowe had watched boats filled with people on their way to be sold at slave markets. Uncle Tom’s Cabin expressed her lifetime hatred of slavery. -
Attack on fort sumter
Lincoln decided to neither abandon Fort Sumter nor reinforce it. He would merely send in “food for hungry men.” At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, Confederate batteries began thundering away to the cheers of Charleston’s citizens. The deadly struggle between North and South was under way. -
Northern Star
In 1847, Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper. He named it The North Star, after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom.Douglass to speak for various anti-slavery organizations.Hoping that abolition could be achieved without violence, Douglass broke with Garrison, who believed that abolition justified whatever means were necessary to achieve it.