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In 1850, disagreements about slavery started to form between the North and the South. In 1849, California requested to become a free state. This did not make the tension between the North and South any better so Senator Henry Clay came up with a compromise that would strengthen a fugitive slave clause in the Constitution that would come to be The Fugitive Slave Act. It would require law enforcement to arrest suspected fugitive slaves. Whoever aided fugitive slaves were subject to fines -
Senator Stephen Douglas made a bill to divide the land in western Missouri into Nebraska and Kansas. He argued popular sovereignty, which will let the people who reside in the state to determine if it will become a free state or not. Both pro-slavery and anti-slavery people rushed to Kansas to determine the results after the law takes action. This turned violent, however. This event was named Bleeding Kansas and became another stone on the pathway leading to civil war. -
On March 30, 1855, another election was held to choose members of the territorial legislature. The new legislature enacted the Bogus Laws which leveled penalties to anyone speaking or writing against slaveholding. A group of proslavery men burned the Free State Hotel and ransacked homes and stores. In retaliation, the abolitionist John Brown led a group of men that dragged five proslavery men from their homes and hacked them to death. This was a small taste to come with the Civil War.
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Senator Charles Sumner addressed the Senate on the issue of whether Kansas should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state. He blamed the fault of Kansas onto the two democratic senators Stephen Douglas and Andrew Butler with mockery. Representative Preston Brooks was a kinsman to Butler and snuck into the chamber Sumner was working in and attacked him with a cane. They both became heroes in their fields, however this event foreshadowed the dangerous pathway to the Civil War. -
An enslaved man named Dred Scott sued for his freedom because they claimed to be in a free state. It became an 11-year legal struggle between himself and the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney read the opinion of the Court, which stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and can’t have any protection from the federal government or the courts. With political debates already happening regarding slavery, this whole event was another step closer to civil war. -
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of formal political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in a campaign for the senator’s seat in Illinois. Douglas did not consider slavery a moral issue, however Lincoln was actively against it. Lincoln lost, however, these debates launched him into national prominence and ultimately won him the true war. He was enabled to run for president in 1860. -
John Brown and a group of his supporters left their farmhouse to Harpers Ferry. He hoped that the local slave population would join the raid and weapons would be supplied to slaves and freedom fighters. Brown took refuge in an engine house. However, this did not last long. US Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived and stormed the engine house, killing many of the raiders and capturing Brown. He was tried and sentenced to death. This uprising moves closer to the upcoming civil war. -
Lincoln was the candidate of the newly created Republican Party, which officially wanted to limit the expansion of slavery. Before Lincoln’s inauguration, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Southerners refused to accept him as their president. South Carolina led the resistance to Lincoln, passing an ordinance of secession in December 1860. Rebellions started to begin but Lincoln had the power to stop them. However, this led to the Civil War.