American politics from 1820-1860

  • Missouri Compromise

    Missouri Compromise
    was a United States federal statute devised by Henry Clay. It regulated slavery in the country's western territories by prohibiting the practice in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30′ north, except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri.
  • 2nd Great Awakening/Rise of abolitionism

    2nd Great Awakening/Rise of abolitionism
    The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States\after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1850s. The Second Great Awakening reflected Romanticism characterized by enthusiasm, emotion, and an appeal to the super-natural. It rejected the skeptical rationalism and deism of the Enlightenment.
  • Gag Resolution

    Gag Resolution
    The pro-slavery forces responded with a series of gag rules that automatically "tabled" all such petitions, preventing them from being read or discussed. The House passed the Pinckney Resolutions, authored by Henry L. Pinckney of South Carolina, on May 26, 1836, the third of which was known from the beginning as the "gag rule" and passed with a vote of 117 to 68
  • Election of 1844

    Election of 1844
    The general election of 1844 took place in the midst of increasingly bitter congressional disputes over anti-slavery agitation that revealed how fragile the peaceful coexistence of free-soil and slave-soil interests within the United States really was. The campaign themes arose in direct response to incumbent President John Tyler's pursuit of Texas annexation as a slave state so as to undermine the unity of the Whig and Democratic parties in his bid to retain the White House
  • Annexation of Texas

    Annexation of Texas
    The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
  • Mexican American War

    Mexican American War
    The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War, the U.S.–Mexican War or the Invasion of Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848.
  • Compromise of 1850

    Compromise of 1850
    The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery. In 1849 California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate. Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended
  • Creation of the Republican Party

    Creation of the Republican Party
    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.
  • Kansas Nebraska Act

    Kansas Nebraska Act
    The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820
  • Bleeding Kansas

    Bleeding Kansas
    Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "southern yankees" elements in Kansas between 1854 and 1861, including "Bleeding Congress".
  • Dred Scott v. Sandford

    Dred Scott v. Sandford
    It held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves", whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.
  • Lincoln Douglas Debates

    Lincoln Douglas Debates
    The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 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.
  • Election of 1860

    Election of 1860
    In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the newly created Republican Party (founded in 1854), secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South. Cause of Civil War.