APUSHch13 Flashcards
free-soil movement; Free-Soil party
Did not want end of slavery but they wanted to keep the West a land of opportunity for whites only so that the white majority would not have to compete with the labor of slaves or free blacks; Free-Soil party in 1848 in North, saying, “free soil, free labor, free men”; advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements
conscience Whigs
Anti-slavery whigs who opposed both the Texas annexation and the Mexican War on moral grounds.
barnburners
Free-Soilers whose defection threatened to destroy the Democratic party., conscience Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats were known as this
popular sovereignty
in the mid-1800s, a term referring to the idea that each territory could decide for itself whether or not to allow slavery by popular vote
Lewis Cass
Democratic senator who proposed popular sovereignty to settle the slavery question in the territories; he lost the presidential election in 1848 against Zachary Taylor but continued to advocate his solution to the slavery issue throughout the 1850s.
Zachary Taylor
12th US President (1849-1850) Taylor was a general and hero of the Mexican-American war. He was elected to the presidency in 1848, representing the Whig party. He was in office during the crisis of California’s admittance to the Union but died in office before a compromise could be worked out, and left vice president Filmore to finalize a deal between the hostile north and south. Advocated admission of California and New Mexico to US.
Compromise of 1850
Henry Clay proposed: Admit California to the Union as a free state
Divide the remainder of the Mexican Cession into New Mexico and Utah (popular sovereignty)
Give land in dispute between Texas and New Mexico to federal government in return for paying Texas’ public debt of 10 million
Ban slave trade in D. C., but permit slaveholding
New Fugitive slave Law to be enforced
Stephen A. Douglas
An Illinois statesman who ran against Lincoln, Bell, and Breckenridge in the 1860 presidential election on a popular sovereignty platform for slavery, Douglas also authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and heightened the slavery debate
Millard Fillmore
13th President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the Presidency upon the death of a sitting President, succeeding Zachary Taylor. Passed Compromise of 1850, sent Matthew C. Perry to Japan to request opening of ports.
Fugitive Slave Law
Congress passed a second version of this law in 1850 to establish fines on federal officials who refused to enforce the law or from whom a runaway slave escaped, to establish fines on individuals who helped slaves escape, to ban runaway slaves from testifying on their own behalf in court, and to give special commissioners power to enforce the law
Underground Railroad
A network of people who helped thousands of enslaved people escape to the North by providing transportation and hiding places
Harriet Tubman
American abolitionist. Born a slave on a Maryland plantation, she escaped to the North in 1849 and became the most renowned conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Influential book about the conflict between a slave named Tom and the brutal white slave owners Simon Legree; moved a generation of northerners as well as many Europeans to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhuman; Southerners believed it to be proof of northern prejudice
Hinton R. Helper, Impending Crisis of the South
Book of nonfiction that attacked slavery using statistics to demonstrate to fellow southerners (he was from NC) that slavery had a negative impact on the South’s economy; Southern states banned the book but used by the North
George Fitzhugh, Sociology of the South
Boldest and most well known of proslavery authors, questioned the principle of equal rights for unequal men and attacked the capitalist wage system as worse than slavery