Transcontinental Railroad

The last spike was laid in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.

When Oregon opened and California was admitted to the Union, Americans began to convince Americans that a transcontinental railroad should be built to connect the West Coast to the rest of the country in the East.  While everyone that a continental railroad needed to be built, there were disagreements as to where itts Eastern starting point should be.  Many southerners believed the starting point for the railroad should be New Orleans.  Eventually it was decided that the starting point in the East would be in Omaha, Nebraska.  In the West, the Central Pacific Railroad built eastward from Sacramento, California.  When the last spike was laid  on May 10, 1869 in Promontory, Utah, the railroad extended across six states.


In order to create the territory of Nebraska, Stephen A. Douglas would have to repeal the Missouri Compromise.  By forcing his bill through Congress, Douglas misjudged the deep-rooted dislike of slavery in the North.  His bill resulted in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, angering the North.

Bleeding Kansas/Caning of Charles Sumner

Preston Brooks, angered by Charles Sumner's criticism of his cousin, savagely

beat him with a cane in the Senate chamber.

Because Eastern Kansas had the same climate and soil as Missouri, farmers moving from Missouri were likely to bring their slaves with them, effectively claiming Kansas for the South.  Realizing this, Northern anti-slavery supporters, supported largely by the New England Emigrant Aid Society, took arms and supplies, and headed South.  Northerners arriving in Kansas recruited and outfitted antislavery settlers against the anti-slavery supporters flooding Kansas.  On May 21, 1856, Southern anti-slavery supporters, referred to as "border ruffians by the press," attacked the town of Lawrence, an anti-slavery stronghold.  They destroyed printing presses, plundered shops and homes, and burned a hotel and the home of the free-state elected governor.

While Bleeding Kansas was occurring in the South, tempers flared over the issue of the Western territories.  In mid-May of 1856, a Massachusetts Senator named Charles Sumner gave a speech accusing the pro-slavery senators of forcing slavery upon Kansas.  During his speech, he mentioned one such senator, Senator Andrew P. Butler by name.  On May 22, Andrew Butler's second cousin, Representative Preston Brooks, approached Charles Sumner's desk in the Senate chamber and after shouting that the speech was "a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine," he beat him and left him injured and bleeding on the chamber floor.

These events marked the first violent confrontations between pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters.  It also showed that the issue was deep in the government, as well as the people.

Kansas-Nebrasks Act

Conflicts between pro-slavery and anti-slavery force escalate.

Passed in May of 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act did away with the Missouri Compromise.  It instead proposed that the new territory be divided into two separate territories, one being a slave state and the other being a free state.  Northern Democrats and Whigs were angered by Douglas's bill, believing that the Missouri Compromise was a promise to halt the spread of slavery.

As a result of this, thousands of Missourians flooded into Kansas, inciting violence and illegally voting in favor of slavery.  Basically, the Kansas-Nebraska led directly to Bleeding Kansas.  

Fugitive Slave Act/Civil Disobedience

Posters such as the one above were posted in the North to 

warn both free and fugitive blacks to beware of slave catchers.

In the year 1850, The Fugitive Slave Act was put into affect.  This act caused considerable social issues between the North and South.  Henry Clay had believed the law would be a benefit to Southern plantation owners because it would allow them to legally cross state borders into the North in order to retrieve their escaped slaves.  Though the act was passed with good intentions, it caused open hostility towards slavery in the South as well as slave-catchers coming to the North to retrieve slaves.  The Fugitive Slave act included a reward for the assistance in catching a fugitive slave.  Along with the financial incentive to boost Northern cooperation, it was also required by law that Northern marshals assist slave-catchers in catching fugitive slaves.  Many people in the North openly disobeyed the Act and assisted fugitive slaves and misled Southern slave-catchers.

As a result of the Fugitive Slave Act, there was increased hostility between the North and South over slavery.  Increasingly more than before, the hostility was open.  People in the North refused to assist Southern slave-catchers, further angering Southern plantation owners.

Wilmot Proviso/Popular Sovereignty

Letters such as this one were written by the South in protest of the Wilmot Proviso.

In August of 1846, Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania posed an addition to the was appropriations bill.  Appropriations are the funds utilized to pay for a war.  In his proposition, Wilmot suggested that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist" in any territory obtained from Mexico.  Wilmot was a member of a group of Northern Democrats who believed James K. Polk was "pro-Southern."  The Wilmot Proviso was an act to try to put a halt to the spread of slavery.

The result of the Wilmot Proviso was a deeper split between the states, specifically the regions of North and South.  While the North claimed the new territories were a property of all the states because they themselves were not yet states, the Southern states claimed that the new territory was open to the spread of slavery.