Chapter 10: The Union in Peril Flashcards
Secession
The formal withdrawal of a state from the Union
Wilmot Proviso
An amendment to an 1856 military appropriation bill, proposing that none of the territory acquired in the war with Mexico would be open to slavery
Compromise of 1850
Compromise made by Henry Clay to appease the slave and non slave states
Popular sovereignty
System in which the residents vote to decide an issue
Stephen A. Douglas
Man who introduced resolutions one at a time, so congressmen could vote based on their opinion
Millard Fillmore
President after Taylor, he supported the Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act
A law enacted as a part of the Compromise of 1850, designed to ensure that escaped slaves would be returned to bondage
Personal liberty laws
Statues, passed in nine Northern states in the 1850s, 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 another safe place
Harriet Tubman
Woman who was born a slave, later escaped from slavery and became a conductor of the Underground Railroad
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abolitionist who published Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Best selling novel published in 1852, that portrayed slavery as a great and 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 wether to allow slavery
John Brown
Slave who believed that it was his calling to rebel against slavery. He was the leader of the Pottawatomie Massacre
Bleeding Kansas
Name applied to the Kansas Territory in the years before the civil war, when the territory battleground between proslavery and antislavery forces
Franklin Pierce
14th President of the United States, whose inability to calm tensions over slavery kept the country on the path to the Civil War.
Nativism
The policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.
Know-Nothing Party
U.S. political party that flourished in the 1850s. It was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the 1840s.
Free-Soil Party
They opposed slavery in the new territories and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states like Ohio.
Republican Party
It was composed mainly of northerners from both major parties of the time, the Democrats and the Whigs, with some former Know-Nothings as well. It’s one of the two major political parties today and they typically hold conservative views.
John C. Frémont
(or Fremont) was an American military officer, explorer, and politician who became the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the US president.
James Buchanan
15th President of the United States, serving immediately prior to the Civil War. He is the only president from Pennsylvania. (And the only president to remain a lifelong bachelor)
Dred Scott
An enslaved African American man in the United States who sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 (popularly known as the “Dred Scott Decision”)
It failed.
Roger B. Taney
fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He was the eleventh United States Attorney General. Covered the Dred Scott Decision.
