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Underground Railroad
descriptionThis "railroad" led slaves to freedom. Abolitionists helpd hide and guide escaped slaves to Canada where they would be free. Amoung them were Harriet Tubaman, Thomas Garret and Harriet Beecher Stowe. As slave owners became more aware of the railroad they became even more strict with their own slaves, making it harder to escape. -
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Causes of the Civil War
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Louisiana Purchase
descriptionThomas Jefferson bought this huge chunk of land from the French and almost doubled our country in size. With new territory came more disputes about slavery. In the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, laws were set that let some newly formed states be slave free or accept slavery. -
Missouri Comprmise
descriptionThis Compromise aimed at starting to look at the balancie of slave states to free states. Its guidlines were that no slavery was to start north of 36 30' latitude in the Louisiana Purchase. It was later repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act by allowing popular sovereignty. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
affectdescriptionNat Turner and a group of other angered slaves killed over 60 white southerners in Virginia. Afterward fear in the South spread and the people held a tighter grip on their slaves causing more concerns from the North. -
Compromise of 1850
descriptionHenry Clay introduced outline of this compromise. California would become a free state and there would be no slave trade in Washington D.C. However there could be slaveholding there. The Fugitive Slave Act was what angered most northerners, and it would cause problems in the decade before the war. -
Fugitive Slave Act
descriptionAs part of the Compromise of 1850 this act tightened the grip on runaway slaves as it tried to do earlier in 1793. Now slaves that were caught escaping were fined up to $1,000. Even white abolitionists were fined if caught helping slaves escape. Angered abolitionists ignored the act and upped their participation in the Underground Railroad even more. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
descriptionThis novel opened the eyes of many Americans who didn't know the direct effects of slavery. Stowe used her own personal experience to outlilne the trials slaves encountered. It also looked at how the legacy of race relations in America had evolved. In the first week it sold 10,000 copies and 300,000 by the first year. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
descriptionThis act allowed Nebraska and Kansas to decide whether they would have slavery. Their choice at popular sovereignty attracted Northerners who thought the act violated the Missouri Compromise and Southerners who need to gain another pro-slavery state to Kansas. The bloody battles that followed are known as "Bleeding Kansas". Eventually the north gains another state when Kansas is addmited into the Union in January of 1861. -
Bleeding Kansas
decriptionAfter the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed pro- and anti-slave advocates rushed to the state to cast their vote. The vast differences in opinion led to outbreaks of violence including the caning in the Senate. This also sparked the mind of John Brown who fought in the Kansas violence and other abolitionists to join the fight against slavery. -
Dred Scott decision
The Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roger B Taney declared blacks unable to become citizens of the United States. Therefore Dred Scott could not claim his freedom even though he had been living in the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin previously.Supreme Court decision
Frederick Douglass thought that this decision would shed more light onto the subject of slavery and later aid in its demise. -
Lincoln's House Divided speech
descriptionAfter Lincoln got the Republican nomination for Illinois Senate he gave this speech. His main point regarding slavery stated that with the two opposite sides of slavery in our country, we could not progress successfully. His collegues thought that his ideas were too radical at first, but they turned out to be straight on to the issues in America. -
Lincoln Douglas debates
decriptionIn the running for US Senate in Illinois, Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas argued over heated topics like popular sovereignty, which gave states the choice to have slavery. Southerners would flock to these disputed areas and create violence like in Kansas over slavery, futhering the divide between civilians. -
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
descriptionJohn Brown and followers capture citizens in Virginia and also seize arsenal. Brown hoped that the local slaves would join in and attack but they didn't. He was later tried and hanged.
