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  Date ; 1820
 Author ; Henry Clay
 Key points ; Missouri will be admitted as a slave state 2. Maine will be admitted as a free state 3. Any territory within the Louisiana Purchase above the Missouri Compromise
 Illustration ; Henry Clay arranged the Missouri Compromise to maintain the balance between slave and free states
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  Date ; August 8 , 1846
 Authur ; David Wilmot
 Key Points ;The Wilmot Proviso would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from the Mexican War
 Illustration ;The Wilmot Proviso illustrated northerners' great concern about the potential of adding slave territory to the Union
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  Date ; January 29, 1850
 Authur ;Henry Clay
 Key Points ; The immediate pressure point was California, whose population mushroomed during the Gold Rush
 Illustration; One of the legislative bills that were passed as part of the Compromise of 1850 was a new version of the Fugitive Slave Act.
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  Date ; May 30, 1854
 Author ; Stephen A. Douglas
 Key Points ; It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders.
 Illustration ; While the agreement incorporated in The Missouri Compromise of 1820 maintained the balance of slave and pro-slave states in the territories added to the Union in The Louisiana Purchase, the issue over slavery's extension into new territories came up again following the Mexican War
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  Date ; 1854
 Explanation : Bleeding Kansas is the term used to described the period of violence during the settling of the Kansas territory.
 Participants ; Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his famed raid on Harpers Ferry
 Illustration ;During Bleeding Kansas, murder, mayhem, destruction and psychological warfare became a code of conduct in Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri.
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  Date ; March 6, 1857
 Explanation ; the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories,
 Decision ; Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before
 Illustration ; The Supreme Court wanted to throw out the case, on grounds that Dred Scott was a slave and not a citizen.
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  Date ; October 16, 1859
 Location ; Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
 Explanation ;John Brown, a staunch abolitionist, and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse hide-out en route to Harpers Ferry.
 Illustration ; , John Brown led a raid on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry (Jefferson County) in October 1859