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The laws proposed allowing California to enter the union as a free state which set up a territorial government for Utah and New Mexico, marking the border between Texas and the us, banning the practice of slavery in Washington DC, and changing the previously existing Fugitive Slave Act. -
In 1849, Californians petitioned for statehood, and after a debate over slavery in the US Congress, California entered the Union as a free, non-slavery state in the Compromise of 1850. California became the 31st state on September 9, 1850. -
In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe shared ideas about the injustice of slavery and challenged dominant cultural beliefs about the physical and emotional capacities of black people. -
In 1854, the Republican Party was born to fight against the spread of slavery in the American territories after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The early Republican Party was composed of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, merchants, wealthy farmers, and, after the Civil War, former black slaves. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act cancelled the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also sparked, “Bleeding Kansas”. -
The impeachment of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks-Sumner Affair, took place on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate Chamber, when Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking stick to attack Senator Charles. Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. -
Kansas was occupied by three different political factions: pro-slavery, pro-liberty, and abolitionists. Violence immediately erupted between these opposing factions and continued until 1861, when Kansas entered the Union as a free state on January 29. That era became forever known as Bleeding Kansas.
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In Dred Scott v. Sandford (argued 1856 - decided 1857), the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether free or slave, were not US citizens and could not sue in federal court. The court also ruled that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in American territories. -
In his "A House Divided" speech, Lincoln countered that the Dred Scott decision of the previous year had already opened the door to the legalization of slavery in the North and in all the territories in which the United States expanded. He argued that if America wanted to be a free country, it had to act now, before it was too late. -
The main theme of the election was slavery and states' rights. Lincoln emerged victorious and became the 16th president of the United States during a national crisis that tore states and families apart and tested Lincoln's leadership and resolve: the Civil War.