Chapter 10 (The Union in Peril)

Question 1

Wilmot Proviso

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Compromise of 1850

Answer 2

a series of congressional measures intended to settle the major disagreements between free states and slave states.

Question 3

Secession

Answer 3

the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union.

Question 4

Popular Sovereignty

Answer 4

a system in which the residents vote to decide an issue.

Question 5

Fugitive Slave Act

Answer 5

a law enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850, designed to ensure that escaped slaves would be returned into bondage.

Question 6

Personal liberty laws

Answer 6

statutes, passed in nine Northern states in the 1850’s, that forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed jury trials for fugitive slaves.

Question 7

Underground Railroad

Answer 7

a system of routes along which runaway slaves were helped to escape to Canada or to safe areas in the free states.

Question 8

Harriett Tubman

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Harriett Beecher Stowe

Answer 9

an ardent abolitionist who wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act.

Question 10

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Answer 10

a best-selling novel by Harriett Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, that portrayed slavery as a great moral evil.

Question 11

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

“Bleeding Kansas”

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

John Brown

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

“Bleeding Sumner”

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Franklin Pierce

Answer 15

Democrat who was elected President in 1852.

Question 16

Nativism

Answer 16

favoring the interests of native-born people over foreign-born people.

Question 17

Know-Nothing Party

Answer 17

a name given to the American Party, formed in the 1850’s to curtail the political influence of immigrants.

Question 18

Free-Soil Party

Answer 18

a political party formed in 1848 to oppose the extension of slavery into U.S. territories.

Question 19

Republican Party

Answer 19

the modern political party that was formed in 1854 in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act by opponents of slavery in the territories.

Question 20

Horace Greeley

Answer 20

an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery.

Question 21

John C. Fremont

Answer 21

the Republican party’s first candidate for President in 1856 Presidential election. Lost to James Buchanan but came in a strong second.

Question 22

James Buchanan

Answer 22

Democrat who was elected President in 1856.

Question 23

Dred Scott

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

Roger B. Taney

Answer 24

handed down the Supreme Court decision against Dred Scott. The court ruled that slaves did not have the rights of citizens.

Question 25

Lecompton Constitution

Answer 25

proposed form of government framed in Lecompton, Kan., by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood.

Question 26

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

Abraham Lincoln

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

Freeport Doctrine

Answer 28

the idea, expressed by Stephen Douglas in 1858, that any territory could exclude slavery by simply refusing to pass laws supporting it.

Question 29

Harper’s Ferry

Answer 29

town in Virginia (now West Virginia) where John Brown tried to seize the federal arsenal and start a slave revolt.

Question 30

Election of 1860

Answer 30

Abraham Lincoln was elected President but without a single electoral vote from the South.

Question 31

Southern Secession

Answer 31

South Carolina led the way, seceding from the Union on December 20, 1860.

Question 32

Confederacy

Answer 32

the Confederate States of America, a confederation formed in 1861 by the Southern states after their secession from the Union.

Question 33

Jefferson Davis

Answer 33

former senator from Mississippi, elected President of the Confederacy on February 9, 1861.

Question 34

States’ Rights

Answer 34

the rights and powers generally conceded to the states, or all those powers claimed for the states under some interpretations of the Constitution.