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Missouri Compromise
Congress was compelled to establish a policy to guide the expansion of slavery into the new western territory. Missouri’s application for statehood as a slave state made a national debate. Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine was admitted as a free state to create balance. A line was also drawn through the western territories along the 36 30 parallel, dividing north and south as free and slave.This divided the country by proving how there has to be a balance with states. -
Nat Turner Rebellion
A slave named Nat Turner incited an uprising that spread through several plantations in southern Virginia. Turner and approximately seventy fellow slaves killed around sixty white people. The deployment of militia infantry and artillery suppressed the rebellion after two days of terror. This scared the southerners and created more sectionalism because the north does not have this issue. -
The Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was a piece of legislation proposed by David Wilmot at the close of the Mexican-American War. If it passed, the Wilmot Proviso would have outlawed slavery in the territory acquired by the United States as a result of the war, which included most of the Southwest and extended all the way to California. The intensity of the debate surrounding the Proviso prompted the first serious discussions of secession. -
The Compromise of 1850
With national relations soured by the debate over the Wilmot Proviso, senators managed to broker a shaky accord with the Compromise of 1850. The compromise prevented further territorial expansion of slavery while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act, a law which compelled Northerners to seize and return escaped slaves to the South. The new Fugitive Slave Act, by forcing non-slaveholders to participate in the institution, also led to increased sectionalism among centrist citizens. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional writing of slave life was a cultural sensation. Northerners felt as if their eyes had been opened to the horrors of slavery, while Southerners protested that Stowe’s work was wrong. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the second-best-selling book in America in the 19th century. Its popularity brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of legislative conflict and widened the division between North and South. -
Bleeding Kansas
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed settlers to determine whether or not to permit slavery by a popular vote. Pro- and anti-slavery agitators flocked to Kansas, hoping to shift the decision by sheer weight of numbers. The two factions struggled for five years with sporadic outbreaks of bloodshed that claimed fifty-six lives. The violence shocked and troubled the nation. The fight over Kansas divided the nation and caused even more sectional tension. -
John Brown's Raid
John Brown and other abolitionists raided a government arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He hoped to seize weapons and distribute them to Southern slaves in order to spark a wracking series of slave uprisings. Although Brown captured the arsenal, he was quickly surrounded and forced to surrender by soldiers under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. He was tried for treason and was executed. Southerners, began to militarize in preparation for the coming war.