1. Pages
The nation was faced with a problem – deciding what to do with the land acquired from Mexico.
The rapid population growth in California meant that it had enough people to create a constitution and apply for statehood.
Compromise of 1850: (5 parts)
Popular Sovereignty in the territory acquired from Mexico
California is admitted as a free state – gives the free states a numerical advantage in the Senate
More strict fugitive slave law
Slave trade is outlawed in DC
Texas paid money to relinquish some land in dispute with New Mexico

2. 1850s begin to unravel Impact of the Fugitive Slave Act:
**Personal Liberty Laws**:
Laws passed by Northern states that barred involvement in returning runaway slaves
The Wisconsin state supreme court in Ableman v. Booth declared the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional
End of the Whigs:
With the deaths of Clay and Webster (1852) the Whig party disappears
Franklin Pierce’s Presidency (elected in 1852 over Whig Winfield Scott)
Ostend Manifesto:
Plan to buy Cuba from Spain, if they refused, US would take it by force
Fear of making Cuba a slave state
Gadsden Purchase:
US (Secretary of War - Jefferson Davis) buys land from Mexico in southern Arizona for Transcontinental RR
Kansas – Nebraska Act (1854) – Proposed by Stephen Douglas
Response to Gadsden Purchase, north wanted RR
Proposed popular sovereignty in Nebraska Territory
Overturned Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery in Kansas
Presumably, KS would be slave, Neb would be free

3. Lincoln and the Republicans 1858 - 1860
Republican party forms in 1854 from the remnants of the Whigs, Liberty, and Free Soil parties
Lincoln-Douglas Debates:
7 debates for the 1858 Senate seat in Illinois
Douglas (D) wins, but alienates the South in the process
Lincoln emerges on a national level – (think Obama or even Beto O‘Rourke) and the Republicans see him as a hope to win the White House in 1860.
Douglas’s belief in the “Freeport Doctrine”: if a territory wanted to, it could keep slavery out – split Democratic Party

4. Lincoln wins the White House
John Brown and Harpers Ferry: (1859)
Hoped to incite a slave rebellion
Many southerners felt that North and Republican Party was filled with “John Browns”
Election of 1860:
Lincoln wins without receiving a single electoral vote from the South
Ran on the platform of stopping the expansion of slavery – not ending slavery where it already existed.
Secession begins before Lincoln ever assumes the office of the president.