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The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. In maintained the balance of power between slave and free states.
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Congress set aside indefinately all antislavery petetions which was called the "gag rule." They caled it this because it gagged or silenced all congressional debate over slavery. Congress has no power to interfere with slavery in the states.
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Nat Turner's rebellion was the last-large scale slave revolt. But individual slaves ran away to freedom in the North. these fugitives from slavery were often helped in their escape by sympathetic people in the North.
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A Pennsylvania representative, Davin Wilmot, added an amendment to the bill known as the Wilmot Proviso. The Wilmot Proviso stated that 'neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist" in any part of the territory that might aquire Mexico.
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California applied for admission to the Union as a free state. Northerners accepted, Southerners rejected.
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Daneil Webster had come up with a plan to end the deadlock over California. His compromise had something to just about please everyone.
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Uncle Toms Cabin was a novel published by Harriet Beecher in 1852. She got the idea from a vision she had while sitting outside a church.
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The Ostend Manifesto was a message sent to the secretary of state by three American diplomats who were meeting in Ostend, Belgium. The message urged the U.S government to seize Cuba by force if Spain continued to refuse to sell the island. The Kansas-Nebraska act, Douglas's fina version of the bill, created two new teeritories, Kansas and Nebraska. It also abolished the Missouri Compromise.
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Proslavery settlers and so-called "border ruffians' from Missouri invaded Lawrence, Kansas the home of the antislavery government. They burned a hotel, lotted serveral homes, and tossed two abolitionist newspapers into the Kaw River. It provoked a rade of outrage in the North. Violence in Congress greatly disturbed Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. In 1856, he voiced his suspicions in a passionate speech Senator Butlers nephew beat Sumner with his metal-tipped cane until it broke in half.
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A man named Dred Scott had traveled to Wisconsin with his owner where slavery was banned beacuse of the Missouri Compromise. When he returned, he argued that he was a free man because of his stay in Wisconsin.
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In 1858, Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln to run for the Senate. In his speech, he pointed out that all attempts to reach compromise on slavery issue had failed. The Lincoln-Douglas debates was about how the Illinois senator saw no reason why the nation could not go on half-slave and half-free. Lincoln and Douglas agreed to dabate over the slavery issue. Douglas arugued that the Dred Scott decision had put the slavery issue to rest. Lincoln thought that slavery was a moral not a legal issue
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John Brown planned to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown wanted to arm the slaves with weapons for a rebellion that would end slavery. All of Browns men were captured or killed during the rade. Brown was convicted of treason and was sentenced to death.
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Lincoln was elected as president in 1860 with just 40 percent of the votes, all of them cast in the North. Talk about secession filled the air. Alarmed senators formed a comittee to search for yet another compromise that might hold the nation together.
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In 1861, they opned fire on Fort Sumter, a ferderal fort in Charleston Harbor. The defenders of the fort hauled down the Stars and Stripes and replaced it with the white flag of surrender. Changing the flag unleashed a wave of patriotic fury in the North.
