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| Oct. 18 |
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| The Ostend Manifesto. The American ministers to Britain, France, and Spain, instructed to confer on the best means of acquiring Cuba, met at Ostend and drew up the manifesto saying that if Spain refused to sell Cuba, the United States would be justified in taking it by force. This caused great excitement in the free states. | 1 |
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| 1854–58 |
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| War for “Bleeding Kansas.” The opening of Kansas to settlement under the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty precipitated a mad scramble for control between proslavery and free-soil elements. In April 1854 the New England Emigrant Aid Society was formed to colonize free-soilers in Kansas. This aroused the proslavery people. Border ruffians from Missouri interfered in elections in Kansas. A proslavery element attacked the town of Lawrence, and in return John Brown (1800–59) staged the massacre at Pottawatomie Creek (May 24, 1856). The Lecompton constitution was formed by proslavery forces, but was denounced by Douglas as a fraud upon the people of Kansas and a violation of the popular sovereignty doctrine. This led to a break between Douglas and James Buchanan. The Senate accepted the Lecompton constitution, but the House rejected it. The deadlock was broken by the English Bill, enacted on May 4, 1858, providing for resubmission of the constitution to popular vote in Kansas. If accepted, the state would receive a grant of land; if rejected, statehood must await further growth of population. It was rejected, and Kansas did not become a state until Jan. 1861. | 2 |
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| 1855 |
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| Opening of Soo Canal between Lakes Superior and Huron provided cheap transportation of iron ore and laid the basis for rapid development of the steel industry. | 3 |
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| 1857, March 4–1861, March 4 |
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| JAMES BUCHANAN (1791–1868), 15th president. | 4 |
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| 1857, March 7 |
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| The Dred Scott decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress had no right to enact a law that deprived persons of their property in the territories of the United States. Dred Scott, therefore, had not acquired his freedom by being taken into a territory where slavery had been prohibited by the compromise. The decision caused bitter criticism of the court in the North. | 5 |
| Panic of 1857 followed a period of overexpansion and speculation. The economic downturn was especially hard on poor and working-class families. By 1860, 5 percent of all families owned 50 percent of the nation's wealth. | 6 |
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| Aug |
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| Lincoln-Douglas debates, seven in number, were part of the campaign for election to the Senate. Stephen Douglas (1813–61) was elected, but Abraham Lincoln (1809–65), by asking Douglas to reconcile his doctrine of popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision, forced him to enunciate his Freeport heresy, which was deeply distasteful to the southern wing of the party. | 7 |
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