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Uncle Tom's Cabin
anti-slavery book which alarmed previously unconcerned Northerners about slavery -
Kansas Nebraska Act
ended the peace established between the North and South by the Compromise of 1850. It was proposed by Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and repealed the Missouri Compromise. The act enforced popular sovereignty upon the new territories but was opposed by Northern Democrats and Whigs. It was passed, however, because President Pierce supported it. The purpose of the bill was to facilitate the building of the transcontinental railroad on a central route. -
Republican Party
organized in 1854 by antislavery Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; nominated John C. Frémont for president in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860 -
Bloody Kansas
A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas Territory where new pro slavery and antislavery constitutions competed.The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent. -
Election of 1856
Democrats nominated Buchanan, Republicans nominated Fremont, and Know-Nothings chose Fillmore. Buchanan won due to his support of popular sovereignty -
Brooks Summer Incident
Sumner-Brooks Affair. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner sat as his desk in the nearly empty Chamber of the United States Senate on May 22, 1856. He had recently given a speech called “The Crime Against Kansas” on abolishing slavery in the United States. -
Dred Scott
American slave who sued his master for keeping him enslaved in a territory where slavery was banned under the Missouri Compromise -
Lecompton Constitution
Under the doctrine of popular sovereignty, proslavery advocates flooded into Kansas Territory and created a government supportive of slavery. By 1857, they drew up a pro-slavery document called the Lecompton Constitution, which would make Kansas a slave state. -
Lincoln Douglas Debates
A series of seven debates. The two argued the important issues of the day like popular sovereignty, the Lecompton Constitution and the Dred Scott decision. Douglas won these debates, but Lincoln's position in these debates helped him beat Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. -
House Divided Speech
A speech made by Abraham Lincoln, and in the speech he noted that tension between the north and the south was intensifying and stated that "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free". -
Harper’s Ferry
John Brown's scheme to invade the South with armed slaves, backed by sponsoring, northern abolitionists; seized the federal arsenal; Brown and remnants were caught by Robert E. Lee and the US Marines; Brown was hanged -
Election of 1860
Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won because the Democratic party was split over slavery. As a result, the South no longer felt like it has a voice in politics and a number of states seceded from the Union. -
Secession
The withdrawal from the United States of eleven southern states in 1860 and 1861. The seceding states formed a government, the Confederacy, in early 1861. Hostilities against the remaining United States, the Union, began in April 1861 ( see Fort Sumter), and the Civil War followed. -
Lincolns 1rst Inaugural Address
On March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was first sworn into office as President of the United States, the Chicago Tribune printed this special pamphlet of his First Inaugural Address. -
John Brown
An abolitionist who attempted to lead a slave revolt by capturing Armories in southern territory and giving weapons to slaves, was hung in Harpers Ferry after capturing an Armory