A good look at the issues debated about the admission of new states, particularly those that would be made from the Louisiana Purchase. Read about why the issue of allowing slavery in the new states was such a hard decision for Congress....

Outline on the extension of slavery and U.S. westward expansion, touching on the development of the cotton gin, Northwest Ordinance and Missouri Compromise.

The question of the expansion of slavery into the territories of the United States was an old question that was addressed again in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Read about the Tallmadge Amendment and the opinions supporting and...

A concise review of the ways the issue of slavery split the country from the Missouri Compromise to eventual secession of the southern states.

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,...

American history from 1820-1861 is interwoven with the history of the Capitol as it was expanded to accommodate a growing government body. A timeline of significant events in the debates over slavery, the addition of free and slave...

An explanation of how the Kansa-Nebraska Act in effect voided the Missouri Compromise, which had been the law that dictated the territories that could allow slavery. Read about the act proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, and see how a...

The Dred Scott decision caused a ripple throughout the country. Read a summary of Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney's proslavery decision, and see how it intensified the rancor between the North and the South.