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The Compromise of 1850 was a package of laws passed by Congress to ease tensions over slavery, and it included the Fugitive Slave Act, which strengthened the laws for capturing escaped slaves and required citizens to assist in their return. The compromise also admitted California as a free state, allowed Utah and New Mexico to decide on slavery via popular sovereignty, and banned the slave trade in Washington -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise, creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and allowing their residents to decide whether to permit slavery through popular sovereignty. -
In its 1857 decision that stunned the nation, the United States Supreme Court upheld slavery in United States territories, denied the legality of black citizenship in America, and declared the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. -
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in the Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. -
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 was an attempt by the abolitionist to incite a slave rebellion by seizing the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown and his 21 followers were quickly surrounded and defeated by local militia and U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee. -
The term "Lincoln-Douglas debates" can refer to the 1858 series of seven political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas for a U.S. Senate seat
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Lincoln received a majority in the Electoral College, with all his Electoral College votes coming from Northern states. He prevailed in 18 states, won 180 electoral votes, and received 39.7% of the popular vote.