chapter 18/19 Flashcards
- popular sovereignty
(Notion that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether o allow slavery. Largely opposed by North abolitionists who feared it would promote spread of slavery)
- Free Soil Party
(1848-1854) Anti-slavery party in the 1848 and 1852 elections that opposed the extension of slavery)
- California Gold Rush
(starts 1849, inflow of lots of miners to NC after news of gold in Suters Mill spread worldwide. state in 1849)
Underground Railroad
(network of volunteers to help runaway slaves escape from south to free soil Canada.)
- Seventh of March Speech
(1850, Daniel Webster urging north to support compromise of 1850. Argues that topography and climate would keep slavery from becoming entrenched in Mexican cession territory)
- Compromise of 1850
(Cali is free state, opened New Mexico/Utah to popular sovereignty, ended slave trade- but not slavery- in D.C. Introduced more stringent fugitive slave law opposed in north and south)
- Fugitive Slave Law
(1850, passed as part of compromise of 1850, set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves)
- Ostend Manifesto
(1854, secret Franklin Pierce administration proposal to purchase or wrest militarily Cuba from Spain. Once found out it was abandoned to opposition from North)
- Opium War
(1839-1842, war between Britain and China over trading rights. Britain’s want to sell opium to Chinese traders. Resulted Americans to seek similar concessions from China)
- Matthew Perry
United States Navy officer, led an expedition to Japan in 1853, forcing them to open trade relations with the West after centuries of isolation, opening them up to trade
- Gadsden Purchase
(1853, got additional land from Mexico for 10 million in Arizona for a southern trans-continental railroad)
- Kansas-Nebraska Act.
(1854, proposed slavery be solved by popular sovereignty in Kanas and Nebraska. Revokes 1820 Missouri compromise. Introduced Stephen Douglass who wanted to bring Nebraska into the union and pave way for north railroad)
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. Heightened North abolition)
- The Impending Crisis of South
(1857, antislavery tract, written by white southerner Hinton R Helper, arguing that no slaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy)
- Dred Scott v. Sanford
(1857, supreme court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that congress didn’t have power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared slaves as property not citizens)
- Roger B. Taney
fifth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, most notably known for delivering the majority opinion in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, which ruled that African Americans could not be considered US citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories
- Charles Sumner
United States senator and a leader of the Radical Republicans during the pre-Civil War and Civil War period
- Preston Brooks
U.S. Representative from South Carolina who infamously attacked Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in 1856 with a cane
- panic of 1857
(finical crash brought n by gold fueled inflation, over speculation and excess grain production. Raised calls in the north for higher tariffs and for free homesteads on western public lands)
- Lincoln-Douglas debates
(1858, series of debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglass during the us senate race in Illinois. Douglass won the election but Lincoln gained national prominence and emerged as the leading candidate for the 1860 republican nomination)
- Freeport Doctrine
(1858, declared that since slavery couldn’t exist without laws to protect it, territorial legislatures, not supreme court would have the final say on slavery question)
- Harpers Ferry
(federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1858. Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed southerners who believed northerners shared I browns extremism.)
- Crittenden amendments. (
1860, proposed in attempt to appease south, it would’ve given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36’30 where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty)
