- Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States. He was president from March 4, 1853- March 4, 1857. Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. He was born on November 23, 1804 in hillsborough, NH.
- The Kansas Nebraska act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
- Popular sovereignty of the people's rule is the principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.
- The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.
- Bleeding Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements in Kansas between 1854 and 1861.