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15.7: Chronology

  • Page ID
    9798
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    The following chronology is a list of important dates and events associated with this chapter.

    Date Event
    1846 David Wilmot attempted to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Wilmot Proviso
    1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War; Whig Zachary Taylor elected president
    1849 California applied for admission to the Union as a free state
    1850 Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to resolve questions about slavery in the Mexican Cession; Zachary Taylor died and Millard Fillmore succeeded him as president; Compromise of 1850 approved by Congress
    1851 Fugitive Slave Act (part of the Compromise of 1850) heightened concern about slavery in the North
    1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin heightened concern about abolition in the South; Democrat Franklin Pierce elected president
    1853 Pierre Soulé, James Buchanan, and John Mason issued the Ostend Manifesto suggesting the United States planned to acquire Cuba by force if necessary; James Gadsden negotiated the purchase of additional land from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase
    1854 Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories, which opened the territories to slavery contrary to the Missouri Compromise; Congress approved the Kansas-Nebraska Act; Second party system collapsed as the Know-Nothings and the Republicans formed to replace the Whigsy
    1856 Antislavery and proslavery advocates fought to win Kansas in the Sack of Lawrence and the Pottawatomie Massacre (Bleeding Kansas); Preston Brooks caned Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber (Bleeding Sumner); Democrat James Buchanan elected president
    1857 Supreme Court issued its decision in the Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated blacks could not be citizens of the United States; North suffered the effects of the Panic of 1857; Kansas applied for statehood as a slave state with the Lecompton Constitution prompting a split in the Democratic Part
    1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates highlighted the problem of slavery and paved the way for the next presidential election
    1859 John Brown launched an attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia
    1860 Democratic Party nominated two candidates for president, Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckenridge; Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell for president; Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for president; Abraham Lincoln elected president; South Carolina seceded from the Union
    1861 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded from the Union; Southern states formed the Confederate States of America; Crittenden Compromise proposed in an effort to prevent further disunion

    This page titled 15.7: Chronology is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Catherine Locks, Sarah Mergel, Pamela Roseman, Tamara Spike & Marie Lasseter (GALILEO Open Learning Materials) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.

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