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compromise of 1850
January 1850: The Compromise of 1850 is introduced in the US Congress. The legislation would eventually pass and be highly controversial, but it essentially delayed the Civil War by a decade. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin.The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” -
Henry Clay
Death of Henry Clay. The great legislator's body was taken from Washington, D.C. to his home in Kentucky and elaborate funeral observances were held in cites along the way. -
Republican Party
Republican Party formed. In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. -
Lawrence, Kansas sacked
The Sacking of Lawrence occurred on May 21, 1856, when pro-slavery activists attacked and ransacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas, which had been founded by anti-slavery settlers. -
Caning of Sumner by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks
The inspiration for this clash came three days earlier when Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts antislavery Republican, addressed the Senate on the explosive issue of whether Kansas should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state -
John Brown kills five proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek
In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers—some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles—killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. -
James Buchanan
James Buchanan in inaugurated as President of the United States. He becomes very ill at his own inauguration, raising questions in the press about whether he was poisoned in a failed assassination attempt. -
U.S. Senate race debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas at seven sites in Illinois
August-October 1858, perennial rivals Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln hold a series of seven debates in Illinois while running for a U.S. Senate seat. Douglas won the election, but the debates elevated Lincoln, and his anti-slavery views, to national prominence. -
John Brown executed
In Charles Town, Virginia, militant abolitionist John Brown is executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection.
