Chapter 19 Flashcards
Dred Scott Decision
Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States.
Bleeding Kansas
Civil war in Kansas over the issue of slavery in the territory, fought intermittently until 1861, when it merged with the wider national Civil War.
Confederate States of America
Government established after seven Southern states seceded from the Union. Later joined by four more states from the Upper South.
Crittenden amendments
Proposed in an attempt to appease the South, the failed Constitutional amendments would have given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36°30’ where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty.
Freeport Doctrine
Declared that since slavery could not exist without laws to protect it, territorial legislatures, not the Supreme Court, would have the final say on the slavery question. First argued by Stephen Douglass in 1858 in response to Abraham Lincoln’s “Freeport Question”.
Harpers Ferry
Federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. Though Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed Southerners who believed that Northerners shared in Brown’s extremism.
Lecompton Constitution
Proposed Kansas constitution, whose ratification was unfairly rigged so as to guarantee slavery in the territory. Initially ratified by proslavery forces, it was later voted down when Congress required that the entire constitution be put up for a vote.
Lincoln-Douglas debates
Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass during the U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Douglass won the election but Lincoln gained national prominence and emerged as the leading candidate for the 1860 Republican nomination
New England Emigrant Aid Company
Organization created to facilitate the migration of free laborers to Kansas in order to prevent the establishment of slavery in the territory.
panic of 1857
Financial crash brought on by gold-fueled inflation, overspeculation, and excess grain production. Raised calls in the North for higher tariffs and for free homesteads on western public lands.
The Impending Crisis of the South
Antislavery tract, written by white Southerner Hinton R. Helper, arguing that nonslaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened Northern support for abolition and escalated the sectional conflict.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
novelist. wrote uncle tom’s cabin, a book about a slave who is treated badly, in 1852. the book persuaded more people, particularly northerners, to become anti-slavery.
the impending crisis of the south
trouble-brewing book written in 1857 by Hinton R. Helper, attempting to prove that slavery hurt non-slaveholding whites the most, used statistics
John Brown
violent abolitionist who murdered slaveholders in Kansas and Missouri (1856-1858) before his raid at Harper’s Ferry (1859), hoping to incite a slave rebellion; he failed and was executed, but his martyrdom by northern abolitionists frightened the South.
Pottawatomie Creek
Pottawatomie Creek massacre In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers killed five pro-slavery settlers in Kansas
James Buchanan
15th President of the United States. He tried to maintain a balance between proslavery and antislavery factions, but his moderate views angered radicals in both North and South, and he was unable to forestall the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860.
Charles Sumner
harsh and militant opponent of slavery, beaten with a cane by Preston Brooks after speech, collapsed unconscious and couldn’t return to senate for 3.5 years (seat kept open), symbol throughout the north.
Preston Brooks
A hot tempered Congressman of South Carolina took vengeance in his own hands. He beat Sumner with a cane until he was restrained by other Senators. He later resigned from his position, but was soon reelected.
Election of 1856
election of 1856 Democrats nominated Buchanan, Republicans nominated Fremont, and Know-Nothings chose Fillmore. Buchanan won due to his support of popular sovereignty
John C. Fremont
John C. Fremont an American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery.
Know Nothing Party
aka the American Party; major political force from 1854-1855; objective: to extend period of naturalization, undercut immigrant voting strengths, and keep aliens in their place
Roger B. Taney
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, he wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, stating that African Americans were not citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional
Stephen Douglas
When: 1813-1861 Who: Illlinois Senator What: Created the Nebraska-Kansas Act, ran for president against Lincoln, Wanted to expand westward and give Chicago the upperhand of having the railroad Significance: He destroyed the Compromise of 1850 and The Missouri Compromise of 1820, indirectly created the Republican Party, with his Nebraska-Kansas act. Which furhter sectionalized the north and south territories.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln Born in 1809, KY log cabin to poor parents, Self-educated; attends frontier school for no more than a year, Prone to depression, Married Mary Todd, Trial lawyer in IL
Banning the extension of slavery in the territories, Protective tariff, Northern transcontinental railroad route, Internal improvements, Free homesteads.
Election of 1860
The Republicans won because the democratic party was divided over the issue of slavery.
Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America the confederation formed in 1861 by the Southern states after their secession form the Union. (South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana)
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin reflected the evangelical antislavery attitudes prompted by the Second
Great Awakening. True or False
True
Congressman Preston Brooks’s beating of Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor convinced many
northerners that proslavery southerners were brutal and violent. True or False
True
The key provision of the Crittenden Compromise was to guarantee that there would always be an exactly equal
number of slave and free states in the Union. True or False
False
John Brown’s plan in raiding the Harper’s Ferry arsenal was to arm the slaves and lead them in a rebellion to
establish a free black state. True or False
True
The secession crisis of the winter of 1860−1861 was deepened by lame duck President James Buchanan’s weak and
uncertain policies in the face of southern rebellion. True or False
True
- Hinton R. Helper’s The Impending Crisis of the South
d. was banned and burned throughout the South.
- The border ruffians were
b. proslavery Missourians who rushed into Kansas to vote illegally and battle antislavery forces there.
- As presented to Congress, the Lecompton Constitution provided for
c. the admission of Kansas as a slave state.
- All of the following were true of the Dred Scott decision EXCEPT
a. the Supreme Court ruled that because Scott was a slave, and not a citizen, he had no right to sue for his freedom in federal
court.
b. a majority of the Court decreed that because a slave was private property, he or she could be taken into any territory and legally
held there in slavery.
c. the Court ruled that the Compromise of 1820 had been unconstitutional all along: Congress had no power to ban slavery from the
territories, regardless even of what the territorial legislatures themselves might want.
d. the Missouri Compromise, banning slavery north of 36° 30’, was repealed.
d. the Missouri Compromise, banning slavery north of 36° 30’, was repealed.
In the election of 1856, the Democrats and Republicans were both challenged by an antiCatholic,
antiimmigrant
party called the
b. Americans or KnowNothings.
- The panic of 1857
d. was caused in part by California gold pouring in and inflating the currency.
- Opposition to the Homestead Act of 1860 included all of the following EXCEPT
a. eastern industrialists who had long been unfriendly to free land because some feared that their underpaid workers would be
drained off to the West.
b. Southerners who felt that ganglabor
slavery could not flourish on a mere 160 acres.
c. President Buchanan, who sided with southern sympathizers in vetoing the legislation.
d. freesoilers
who feared the legislation would tip the political balance against the South.
d. freesoilers
who feared the legislation would tip the political balance against the South.
- The Democratic Party in 1860
d. bitterly wrangled over the platform, leading the delegates from most of the cotton states to walk out.
- The reaction of most Northerners to John Brown was to
d. condemn the raid on Harper’s Ferry but mourn Brown as a martyr after his execution.
- The movement of southern states to secede from the Union after Lincoln’s election was led by
b. South Carolina.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
a. focused especially on slavery’s destructive effect on black families.
- At the Democratic convention of 1860, Senator Stephen Douglas
could not muster the necessary twothirds
vote, so the entire body dissolved.
- The Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling in the Dred Scott case was that the
Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress could not prohibit citizens from taking their slave property into any
territories.
- The Tariff of 1857 did all of the following EXCEPT
a. addressed the requests of industrialists in the North for higher duties.
b. responded to pressures from the South.
c. melted away the surplus in the Treasury.
d. reduced duties to about 20 percent on dutiable goods.
a. addressed the requests of industrialists in the North for higher duties.
- Congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death because
a. Sumner had vehemently attacked the South and proslavery Senator Andrew Butler in a speech on the Senate floor.
- The conflict over slavery in Kansas
c. revealed the deep flaws in Stephen Douglas’s idea that popular sovereignty could resolve the slavery issue.
One of the persistent northern demands that was vetoed by proslavery Democratic presidents before the Civil War
was a
d. homestead act that would offer free farms to western settlers.
- All of the following were true of the Constitutional Union party EXCEPT it
a. was a middleoftheroad
hastily organized group, fearing for the Union.
b. was sneered at as the Do Nothing or Old Gentleman’s party.
c. rejected the opportunity to elect a compromise candidate.
d. consisted mainly of former Whigs and KnowNothings,
a veritable gathering of graybeards.
c. rejected the opportunity to elect a compromise candidate.
- Lincoln rejected the proposed Crittenden Compromise because
b. it permitted the further extension of slavery south of the line of 36° 30’.
In the election of 1860, the strongly proSouthern
and proslavery candidate was
a. Vice President John Breckinridge.
