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Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1848 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War because it would upset the balance of free and slave states, leaning in favor of free states which would help escalate to the Civil War. -
Free Soil Movement
The Free Soil movement was based on the idea that the lands to the west of the existing states, and particularly lands taken from Mexico during the Mexican American War, should not have slavery.
The Free Soil movement helped to contribute to the Civil War because it helped to create tension between the North and South. This tension, over the issue of the expansion of slavery, helped drive the two sections apart. -
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War. The compromise admitted California as a free state and did not regulate slavery in the remainder of the Mexican cession all while strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The book’s exploration of slave life was a cultural sensation. Northerners felt as if their eyes had been opened to the horrors of slavery, while Southerners protested that Stowe’s work was slanderous. Its popularity brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of legislative conflict and widened the division between North and South. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, narrowly passed while Congressmen brandished weapons and uttered death threats in the House chambers, overturned parts of the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers in the two territories to determine whether or not to permit slavery by a popular vote. Split the North and South even more. -
Republican Party formed
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. -
Bleeding Kansas incidents
Pro- and anti-slavery agitators flocked to Kansas, hoping to shift the decision by sheer weight of numbers. The two factions struggled for five years with sporadic outbreaks of bloodshed that claimed fifty-six lives. Although both territories eventually ratified anti-slavery constitutions, the violence shocked and troubled the nation. -
Caning of Charles Sumner
The Caning of Charles Sumner, occurred in 1856 in the United States Senate when Representative Preston Brooks used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including a relative of Brooks. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that eventually led to the American Civil War. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott was a Virginia slave who tried to sue for his freedom in court. The case eventually rose to the level of the Supreme Court, where the justices found that, as a slave, Dred Scott was a piece of property that had none of the legal rights or recognitions afforded to a human being. The decision threatened to entirely recast the political landscape that had thus far managed to prevent civil war. Polarization intensified. -
Lincoln-Douglas debates
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.By the 1850s, slavery had become a major political issue. Douglas was an incumbent senator who had established himself as a supporter of popular sovereignty on the subject of slavery. -
John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. This made the south furious, further driving the North and South apart. -
Election of Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was elected by a considerable margin in 1860 despite not being included on many Southern ballots. As a Republican, his party’s anti-slavery outlook struck fear into many Southerners. On December 20, 1860, a little over a month after the polls closed, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Six more states followed by the spring of 1861.
