-
Republican Party
The Republican Party, often called the GOP (short for “Grand Old Party”) is one of two major political parties in the United States. Founded in 1854 as a coalition opposing the extension of slavery into Western territories, the Republican Party fought to protect the rights of African Americans after the Civil War. -
Republican Party 1850
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists -
Secession election 1859
Secessionists constituted a majority when the General Assembly met in December 1850. They elected the secessionist John H. Means governor, sent Rhett to the U.S. Senate, and levied new taxes to fund increased appropriations for a board of ordinance and other military measures. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War". -
Bloody Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in 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. -
Kansas-Nebraska act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, signed into law on May 30, 1854, by President Franklin Pierce, was closely related to national and sectional politics in the 1850s. The incentive for the organization of the territory came from the need for a transcontinental railroad. -
Election 1856
The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee and former President Millard Fillmore. -
Brooks Sumner incident
The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner. -
Lecompton Constitution
Lecompton Constitution, (1857), instrument framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro- slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. -
Dred Scott
Dred Scott (c. 1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African American man who, along with his wife, Harriet, unsuccessfully sued for freedom for themselves and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott decision". -
Lincoln Douglas debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. -
House Divided speech
The House Divided Speech was an address given by Illinois Senatorial Candidate and future President of the United States Abraham Lincoln, on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's US senator. -
John Brown 1800-1859
John Brown was a leading figure in the abolitionist movement in the pre-Civil War United States. Unlike many anti-slavery activists, he was not a pacifist and believed in aggressive action against slaveholders and any government officials who enabled them. -
Harper's ferry incident
Harpers Ferry Raid, (October 16–18, 1859), assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armory located at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia). It was a main precipitating incident to the American Civil War. -
Election 1860
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, absent from the ballot in ten slave states, won a national popular plurality. -
Lincoln's first Inaugural address
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth President of the United States. The speech was primarily addressed to the people of the South, and was intended to succinctly state Lincoln's intended policies and desires toward that section