Timeline of Important Events Associated with the Civil War

The Missouri Compromise was the first real attempt to find a solution to the issue of slavery.

As new states entered the Union, the question of whether the new states would be slave or free arose. And when Missouri sought to enter the Union as a slave state, the issue became enormously controversial. The Missouri Compromise, which was partly engineered by Henry Clay, balanced the numbers of slave and free states, and for three decades seemed to keep the slavery crisis from entirely dominating the nation. Maine was allowed to enter the Union as a free state while Missouri entered the Union as a slave state. That made the balance 12 free states and 12 slave states.

The Compromise of 1850 (September 1850)

After the Mexican War, the United States gained territory in the West, and the slavery issue ignited again over the question of whether slavery would be allowed to exist in the new states and territories.

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of bills in Congress which sought to settle the issue, and it did postpone the Civil War by a decade. But the compromise, which contained five major provisions, was destined to be a temporary solution:

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  California was admitted as a free state.
  
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  Territories of New Mexico and Utah were given the option of legalizing slavery.
  
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  The border between Texas and New Mexico was fixed.
  
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  A stronger fugitive slave law was enacted.
  
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  The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia, though slavery remained legal.
  

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the last major compromise that sought to hold the Union together, and it proved to be the most controversial.

Engineered by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the legislation almost immediately had an incendiary effect. Instead of lessening tensions over slavery, it inflamed them, and led to outbreaks of violence that led the legendary newspaper editor Horace Greeley to coin the term "Bleeding Kansas."

The Kansas-Nebraska Act also led to bloody attack in the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol, and it prompted Abraham Lincoln, who had given up on politics, to return to the political arena.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a classic case of legislation having unintended consequences.

Open violence in Kansas reached a peak in 1856, when pro-slavery forces burned the "free soil" settlement of Lawrence, Kansas. In response, the fanatical abolitionist John Brown and his followers murdered men who supported slavery.