Read the first few paragraphs of this article to find out about the formation of the Republican Party in 1854 and how it affected the political scene in the last part of the 1850s.

This article presents the second part of the history of the Whig Party to find out why the issue of slavery brought about its demise.

Find out about the spilt in the Republican Party during the campaign of 1912, which resulted in the formation of the Bull Moose Party, the progressive party which selected Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate.

From a lengthy essay on the history of the railroad in the United States. This section describes the dramatic political changes that took place with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. This led to the formation of the...

Read about the essential repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which had established which states could be slave and which would be free for thirty years, with the rancorous passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. See who supported it and why,...

The Compromise of 1850 did not solve all the slavery issues in the territories, which was not surprising. Read about the Kansas-Nebraska Act, put forth by Sen. Stephan Douglas, who proposed that the issue be decided by popular...

A timeline of actions tied to the prohibition of or ending of slavery from the meeting of the Continental Congress in 1774 to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859.

[Free Registration/Login Required] This flipchart details the growing political divisions in the United States in the decade before the Civil War. It includes information on the election of 1856, the Dred Scott Decision, the Lincoln...