Chapter/ Packet 17

Question 1

Fire eaters

Answer 1

were a group of pro-slavery Democrats in the Antebellum South who urged the separation of Southern states into a new nation, which became the Confederate States of America. The dean of the group was Robert Rhett of South Carolina.

Question 2

Popular sovereignty

Question 3

Free soil party

Answer 3

a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.

Question 4

California gold rush

Answer 4

1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California.

Question 5

Underground Railroad

Answer 5

network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada.

Question 6

7th of March speech

Answer 6

On March 7, 1850, Senator Daniel Webster delivered his famous “Seventh of March” speech urging sectional compromise on the issue of slavery. Advising abolition-minded Northerners to forgo antislavery measures, he simultaneously cautioned Southerners that disunion inevitably would lead to war.

Question 7

Compromise of 1850

Answer 7

The acts called for the admission of California as a “free state,” provided for a territorial government for Utah and New Mexico, established a boundary between Texas and the United States, called for the abolition of slave trade in Washington, DC, and amended the Fugitive Slave Act.

Question 8

Fugitive slave law

Answer 8

Passed on September 18, 1850 by Congress, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was part of the Compromise of 1850. The act required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves.

Question 9

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

Answer 9

compromise agreement (signed April 19, 1850) designed to harmonize contending British and U.S. interests in Central America.

Question 10

Ostend Manifesto.

Answer 10

was a secret document written by American diplomats in 1854 at Ostend, Belgium. The manifesto outlined a plan for the United States Government to acquire the island of Cuba from Spain.

Question 11

Opium war

Answer 11

was the result of China’s attempt to suppress the illegal opium trade, which had led to widespread addiction in China and was causing serious social and economic disruption there. British traders were the primary source of the drug in China.

Question 12

Treaty of Kanagawa

Answer 12

opening trade with American vessels in some Japanese ports, protection for American sailors and vessels in Japan, and the formation of a US consulate in Japan.

Question 13

Treaty of wanghia

Answer 13

was the first of the unequal treaties imposed by the United States on China. As per the terms of the diplomatic agreement, the United States received the same privileges with China that Great Britain had achieved under the Nanjing Treaty in 1842.

Question 14

Gadsden purchase

Answer 14

is a 29,670-square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Mesilla, which took effect on June 8, 1854.

Question 15

Kansas Nebraska act

Answer 15

of 1854 was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce.

Question 16

General Lewis Cass

Answer 16

strongly supported United States expansion and rallied behind President James K. Polk during the U.S.-Mexican War. Cass firmly believed that incorporating new people and territory under United States control would help these people live more fruitful lives. This belief was a major component of Manifest Destiny.

Question 17

Harriet Tubman

Answer 17

Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War.

Question 18

Senator Stephen A. Douglas

Answer 18

Douglas staunchly supported U.S. territorial expansion and desired a transcontinental railroad, a free land/homestead policy, and the formal organization of U.S. territories. It was these desires that led to Douglas’s most famous piece of legislation: the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Question 19

William h Seward

Answer 19

was appointed Secretary of State by Abraham Lincoln on March 5, 1861, and served until March 4, 1869. Seward carefully managed international affairs during the Civil War and also negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska.

Question 20

Millard Fillmore

Answer 20

13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. By championing the Compromise of 1850, he can be credited for keeping America from civil war for more than a decade.

Question 21

Anthony Burns

Answer 21

May 1854, slave catchers arrested Anthony Burns, a 20 year old freedom seeker who escaped slavery in Virginia. His arrest sparked major protests, a failed courthouse rescue, a military takeover of downtown Boston, and, ultimately, a return to slavery by the federal government.

Question 22

Franklin Pierce

Answer 22

was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation’s unity. He alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.

Question 23

John P Hale

Answer 23

He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845 and in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1853 and again from 1855 to 1865. He began his Congressional career as a Democrat, but helped establish the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and eventually joined the Republican Party.

Question 24

Jefferson davis

Answer 24

Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of America throughout its existence during the American Civil War (1861–65). Prior to that, Davis served in the army and represented Mississippi in the U.S. House of Representatives (1845–46) and the Senate (1847–51 and 1857–61).

Question 25

James Gadsden

Answer 25

negotiated the treaty for the removal of the Seminoles to the west in 1832 and served in the war that followed the refusal of some Seminoles to leave Florida. In 1840 he became president of a railroad in South Carolina.