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The Gadsden Purchase Treaty

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Gadsden Purchase: The Gadsden Purchase was a treaty made in 1853 by James Gadsden of South Carolina. Gadsden was appointed by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to secure a chunk of Mexico for a railway route. He was able to negotiate land along the southern tips of current day Arizona and New Mexico, the northern border of Mexico, for $10 million from Spaniard Santa Anna. The land Gadsden had managed to obtain would have made making a southern railroad much more simple than cutting through more northern mountains. The Gadsden Purchase lead to criticism by Northerners who were skeptical of paying large amounts for a dessert similar to the size of South Carolina.

Raid on Harpers Ferry: In October of 1859, John Brown, an …show more content…

The first instance of violence came when abolitionist newcomers, including the infamous New England Emigrant Aid Company, in Kentucky carried rifles nicknamed “Beecher’s Bibles” chanting comments like “Ho for Kansas” out to make both new territories free states. Southerners, at the time of the newcomers arrival, had thought there was an unspoken understanding that Kansas would become a slave state and Nebraska a free state raising new feelings of betrayal. Bullets between the two disagreeing groups began to be shot. The turning point of Bleeding Kansas, however, came in 1856 when proslavery raiders burned and shot up a free-soil town called Lawrence. These violent explosions largely contributed to the effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of …show more content…

The three ministers met in Ostend, Belgium to create the final document which stated: America should offer $120 million for the island and, if the offer was refused, America would have every reason to take Cuba from Spain, presumably leading to war.

Freeport Question and Freeport Doctrine: Two years before the Election of 1869, Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln challenged Northern-Democratic nominee Stephen Douglas to a series of debates. From August to October, seven confrontations were arranged named the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. During the most famous debate in Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln asked the infamous Freeport question: “Suppose the people of a territory should vote slavery down. The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision had decreed that they could not. Who would prevail, the Court or the

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