The Compromise of 1850 was one of several attempts by both the North and the South to settle differences over slavery’s expansion.
As a result of the Mexican War, the United States acquired most of the present-day American Southwest. The acquisition of this land immediately increased tensions between the North and the South, as the two [...]

In 1857, the Battle of Lumbarton occurred between federal marshals, who were enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and anti-slavery Ohioans.
Addison White, an escaped slave, set the chain of events in motion that culminated in the Battle of Lumbarton. In 1856, White ran away from Kentucky to Ohio along the Underground Railroad. He eventually [...]

The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Case of 1858 showed how divided Ohio had become over the issue of slavery.
On September 13, 1858, a federal marshal in Oberlin, Ohio arrested a runaway slave named John Price. Under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the federal government was required to assist slaveholders in reclaiming their runaway slaves. The marshal [...]

Though much of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in Brunswick, Maine, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s inspiration came from listening to stories told by fugitve slaves escaping via the Underground Railroad while living in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1850 her husband, Calvin Stowe, accepted a position at Bowdoin College and relocated to Maine. It would be the passage [...]