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The Missouri Compromise
An agreement proposed in 1819by Henry Clay to keep the number of slaves and free states equal. -
Free Soil Party
Bipartisan,antislavery party founded in the US in 1848 to keep slavery out of the western territories. -
Compromise of 1850
Was an attempt to seek compromise and avert a crisis between North and South -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin, the best-selling book of the 19th century, was an antislavery novel written by abolitionist Harriett Beecher Stowe. Published in 1851 in part to protest the Fugitive Slave Act, the novel was informed by Stowe's experiences on the Ohio-Kentucky border and firsthand slave narratives including the autobiography of Josiah Henson. The novel humanized slaves with sympathetic, often shocking, depictions of their lives and treatment, and was widely banned and ridiculed in the South. S -
Formation of Republican Party
A political party that began in 1854 and is today one of the two major political parties in the United States. Originally, it was composed mainly of northerners from both major parties of the time, the Democrats and the Whigs, with some former Know-Nothings as well. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their broders. -
Bleeding Kansas
A series of violent political confrontations in the US involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery -
Dred-Scott Case
A controversial ruling made by the Supreme Court in 1857, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Dred Scott, a slave, sought to be declared a free man on the basis that he had lived for a time in a “free” territory with his maste -
John Brown's Raid
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of HARPER'S FERRY, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. He would seize the arms and ammunition in the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. He had no rations. He had no escape route. His plan was doomed from the very beginning. But it did succeed to deepen the divide between the North and South. -
Election of 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 was the 19th quadrennial presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War.