The Coming of the Civil War

Political Debates and Controversies

1846 proposal to prohibit the expansion of slavery into the territories won in the Mexican American War

Calhoun, Speech on the Oregon Bill (1848)

1854 Act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and allowed for popular sovereignty

The Struggles Over Slavery

Dred Scott V Sandford

1857 Supreme Court decision that declared the Missouri Compromise illegal, reaffirmed slaveholder’s property rights, and denied that Black Americans were United States citizens.

Calhoun, Speech on Abolition Petitions, 1837

1837 speech delivered by John C. Calhoun

Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July (1852)

Speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5th, 1852

Other

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