1. (Review) Compromise of 1850
Congress passed the Compromise of 1850 which stated:
CA would be free
Slave trade would be abolished in Washington D.C.
No new laws would be passed to prevent slavery in future territories won from Mexico
Stronger laws would be passed to help protect the “rights” of slaveholders

2. Fugitive Slave Act
Made it legal to hold accused fugitive slaves without a warrant, and they would not receive a trial
It required Northerners to help recapture slaves
Penalties for not cooperating
Slave catchers could freely search throughout the North runaways
Some caught free African Americans

3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe, outraged by the Fugitive Slave Act, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Showed the cruelty
and immorality of slavery
The book became extremely
popular in the North
The South said it gave a false
depiction of slavery

4. Kansas Nebraska Act This Bill Proposed:
A division of the Kansas Nebraska territory into two parts
Kansas and Nebraska
Popular sovereignty would determine whether slave or free in the western territories
Southerners liked it; opponents of slavery didn’t
The law passed and led to violence in the new Kansas Territory

6. Violence Erupts
Settlers in Kansas began taking sides on the slave issue
Proslavery representatives were elected to the Kansas’ legislature in 1855
Proslavery voters from Missouri illegally voted, swinging the vote
Antislavery settlers rejected the elected government
Sack of Lawrence: proslavery mob looted Lawrence, Kansas

7. Bleeding Kansas Pottawatomie Massacre
Antislavery response to the Sack of Lawrence
Seven extreme abolitionists attacked five proslavery neighbors
Result was civil war in Kansas
The territory became know as “Bleeding Kansas” due to the fighting that continued for the next three years