Chapter 10 (The Union in Peril) Flashcards
Wilmot Proviso
an amendment to an 1846 military appropriations bill, proposing that none of the territory acquired in the war with Mexico would be open to slavery.
Compromise of 1850
a series of congressional measures intended to settle the major disagreements between free states and slave states.
Secession
the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union.
Popular Sovereignty
a system in which the residents vote to decide an issue.
Fugitive Slave Act
a law enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850, designed to ensure that escaped slaves would be returned into bondage.
Personal liberty laws
statutes, passed in nine Northern states in the 1850’s, that forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed jury trials for fugitive slaves.
Underground Railroad
a system of routes along which runaway slaves were helped to escape to Canada or to safe areas in the free states.
Harriett Tubman
one of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad, she made 19 trips to the South and is said to have helped 300 slaves escape
Harriett Beecher Stowe
an ardent abolitionist who wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
a best-selling novel by Harriett Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, that portrayed slavery as a great moral evil.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
a law, enacted in 1854, that established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and gave their residents the right to decide whether to allow slavery.
“Bleeding Kansas”
a name applied to the Kansas Territory in the years before the Civil War, when the territory was a battleground between proslavery and antislavery forces. Some 200 people were killed.
John Brown
a fiery abolitionist who led attacks of proslavery settlers in the Kansas Territory and later tried to start a slave uprising by raiding the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry.
“Bleeding Sumner”
Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts was attacked in the Senate chamber by Representative Preston Brooks because of a speech he had made attacking the South’s support of slavery.
Franklin Pierce
Democrat who was elected President in 1852.
Nativism
favoring the interests of native-born people over foreign-born people.
Know-Nothing Party
a name given to the American Party, formed in the 1850’s to curtail the political influence of immigrants.
Free-Soil Party
a political party formed in 1848 to oppose the extension of slavery into U.S. territories.
Republican Party
the modern political party that was formed in 1854 in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act by opponents of slavery in the territories.
Horace Greeley
an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery.
John C. Fremont
the Republican party’s first candidate for President in 1856 Presidential election. Lost to James Buchanan but came in a strong second.
James Buchanan
Democrat who was elected President in 1856.
Dred Scott
a slave from Missouri who sued for his freedom after his owner had taken him to live in free territory for four years. The Supreme Court ruled against him in 1857.
Roger B. Taney
handed down the Supreme Court decision against Dred Scott. The court ruled that slaves did not have the rights of citizens.
Lecompton Constitution
proposed form of government framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
A series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for election to the Senate from Illinois. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery.
Abraham Lincoln
a lawyer and politician from Illinois who broke from the Whig Party to the Republican Party after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1858 but was elected President in 1860.
Freeport Doctrine
the idea, expressed by Stephen Douglas in 1858, that any territory could exclude slavery by simply refusing to pass laws supporting it.
Harper’s Ferry
town in Virginia (now West Virginia) where John Brown tried to seize the federal arsenal and start a slave revolt.
Election of 1860
Abraham Lincoln was elected President but without a single electoral vote from the South.
Southern Secession
South Carolina led the way, seceding from the Union on December 20, 1860.
Confederacy
the Confederate States of America, a confederation formed in 1861 by the Southern states after their secession from the Union.
Jefferson Davis
former senator from Mississippi, elected President of the Confederacy on February 9, 1861.
States’ Rights
the rights and powers generally conceded to the states, or all those powers claimed for the states under some interpretations of the Constitution.
