Missouri Compromise – Allows for Missouri to join as a Slave state by creating Maine and making it a Free state. Equal Balance of 12 Free and 12 Slave States. Also it creates an invisible line that divides the nation into Free States in the north and Slave States in the south; issue will be that it only applies to states before and included in the Louisiana Purchase.
Wilmot Proviso – Failed law that meant to ban slavery in the territories won from Mexico, Southern Slave states convince Congress to shut it down.
Popular Sovereignty – New states would be able to vote and have their state government decide to be Free or Slave States.
Free-Soil Party – same premise of the Wilmot Proviso, it is a Party that is trying to keep slavery out of the Western territories.
Calhoun vs Clay – The immortal men square off again; Clay against slavery in the new territories and Calhoun supporting the expansion into the West. Clay said a solution was needed or the nation would be forced to break apart. Calhoun dies, Clay is gone from politics, President Taylor dies and Millard Fillmore assumes the presidency.
Compromise of 1850 – Clay’s solution to California being admitted as a free or slave state.
Fugitive Slave Act (FSA) – requires all citizens to assist in capturing runaway slaves (they are property). All those not in compliance or caught helping slaves could be charged $1000 as well as face jail time. Judges were paid $10 for convicting runaways and $5 for letting them go free, judges begin lying to get the money.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional writing about a slave named Tom in the south during the era of the FSA. She was a white northern woman with little knowledge of slavery in the south, thus it outraged the southern slave-owners while it was an instant success in the north.
Kansas-Nebraska Act – Issue over adding Nebraska territory into a slave or free state, so they divide the territory into the Nebraska and the Kansas Territory. They were allowed to have popular sovereignty, the north is outraged because both territories at above the Missouri line and they could turn slave.
“Bleeding Kansas” – both sides of the issue flood the territory with their supporters, leading to clashes between the Kansas and Nebraska Peoples. There is a lot of blood shed over the issue and therefore earns the name “Bleeding Kansas.” (Missouri and Kansas become huge rivals through this and that hatred persists even today in college sports)
Dred Scott – Slave that moved with his owner from Missouri to Illinois and then to Free Wisconsin, upon moving back to Missouri, Scott’s owner died. He filed a lawsuit that since he had lived in a Free State, that he had become free. The Supreme Court decided that Scott, as an enslaved person, could not file a lawsuit as he wasn’t a citizen as well as the Court said he was in fact “property.” To go one step further, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress did not have the right to outlaw slavery in the West; therefore making the Compromise of 1850 unconstitutional.
Reaction – White Southerners rejoice in what they had been demanding for years. All northerners were upset by the decision, even those who opposed the abolitionists were shocked by the decision.
Republican Party – gained spotlight behind Lincoln’s “house-divided” speech, and became proponents of a free American nation, not one dived “half slave and half free.” Group was founded by Free- Soilers, Northern Democrats and antislavery Whigs, with the goal of preventing slavery in the West; few Republicans were abolitionists. Fremont loses to Democrat Buchanan with Fillmore being defeated, Fremont gained 1/3 of the popular vote and the Southerners were afraid they were losing political support.
Lincoln – Log-cabin man from Kentucky debates the future presidential candidate Stephen Douglas for the Illinois Senate seat. Douglas was against slavery but decided to let the peoples vote via popular sovereignty, Lincoln didn’t believe in equal rights but did believe in prohibiting slavery in the west because it was a “moral, social and political wrong,” and said he would not challenge slavery in the states in which it already existed. Douglas wins the Senator position, but Lincoln gains fame for his speeches and when the two meet 2 years later for the presidential race, Lincoln will be just as well known.
Brown’s Raid – abolitionist John Brown lead a small group to Harpers Ferry, Va. And raided a federal arsenal (or gun warehouse), he thought that enslaved blacks would flock and raid, but he was wrong and captured and sentenced to death for murder and treason. Since he accepted his fate with dignity, Brown became a hero and martyr for the anti-slavery cause, which outraged the southerners.
Election of 1860 – Lincoln and Douglas meet again in the presidential race, however, the democrats make Lincolns victory easy because they had divided their own party into the Northern Democrats (Douglas) and Southern Democrats (Breckinridge).
Secession of the Confederacy - The south reacts to Lincolns election by saying they have no voice in politics anymore, in one last attempt Senator Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a bill to extend the Compromise Line to the Pacific and make an unamendable amendment that would preserve slavery in the south permanently, but the damage was already done and the south seceded one state after another (South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). They said that the constitution protected their choice because “it is the right of the people to alter or abolish” the government that denies the citizens rights. The Confederacy is born from these 7 states and their first President is the Mississippian, Jefferson Davis.
Civil War Ignites – In Lincoln’s inaugural address he states “no state… can lawfully get out of the Union,” but he would not start a war, that would be for the Southern Confederates to do. Davis had issued orders to seize federal forts in the South, this pressured Lincoln into sending troops to defend the federal property and endangering the position of the 8 undecided Slave States yet to leave the Union. By this point the Union only had 3 Florida forts and Fort Sumter off the Charleston Harbor. Lincoln told South Carolina governor Anderson that he was sending Sumter food but no weapons or reinforcements, Anderson decided then that the Union could not preserve Ft. Sumter and bombarded it into surrendering… officially starting the American Civil War.