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President Taylor dies on July 9 and is succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore. Although he is a New Yorker, Fillmore is more inclined to compromise with or even support Southern interests
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Henry Clay proposes the Compromise of 1850 to handle California's petition for admission to the union as a free state and Texas's demand for land in New Mexico
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Abolitionist editor Sherman Booth was arrested for violating the Fugitive Slave Act when he helped incite a mob to rescue an escaped slave
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Eli Thayer forms the New England Emigrant Aid Society to encourage settlement of Kansas by persons opposed to slavery
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Anthony Burns is a fugitive slave from Virginia and is arrested by federal agents in Boston. Abolitionists attack the court house and kill a deputy marshal in an unsuccessful attempt to free Burns
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John Brown, an abolitionist born in Connecticut, and his sons kill five pro-slavery men from Pottawatomie Creek in retaliation for the Sacking of Lawrence.
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Missouri Ruffians and local pro-slavery men sack and burn the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas
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In August, a short economic depression, the Panic of 1857, arises, mainly in large northern cities, as a result of speculation in and inflated values of railroad stocks and real estate
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Lincoln gives his Cooper Institute speech against the spread of slaver
