The abolitionist movement wasn't only about white activists -- it depended on Black leaders such as Tubman. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 rendered free states inhospitable to fugitives, so she ran ...

The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act When California, one of the territories gained by the U.S. in the Mexican War, petitioned to become a state, the controversy over whether slavery ...

In the 1850s and 1860s, British North America became a popular refuge for slaves fleeing the horrors of plantation life in the American South. In all 30,000 slaves fled to Canada, many with the ...

Whether born slave or free, African Americans in the North found themselves at the center of the conflict over slavery. Read about three African Americans who became well-known for their ...

The Republican Party were not popular in the South. Southerners believed that they wished to abolish slavery. In the 1860 election the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won all the Northern states.

Settlers from the South wanted to move to the West and take their enslaved workers with them Northerners wanted to stop the spread of slavery As new states were created, the issue of slavery ...