Franklin Pierce Flashcards
Term
1853-1857
Party
Democratic
Opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act
Fugitive Slave Act: Declared that all captured runaway slaves were to be returned to their masters (1850)
Opposition from: North
Why: The majority of the North was anti-slavery
Response: Many northern states passed personal liberty laws offering protection to fugitives and formed vigilance committees to prevent the slave catchers from carrying out their orders
(Barrons 139)
Ostend Manifesto
What was it: A document written by American Doiplomats in Ostend, Belgium (1854)
Purpose: The manifesto expressed a wish of southerners to purchase Cuba from Spain and turn it into a slave state
Cause: Provoked anger from northern politicians.
(Barrons 136)
“Young America” Movement
What was it: An American political and cultural attitude in the mid-nineteenth century
Purpose: Advocated free trade, social reform, expansion southward into the territories, and support for republican, anti-aristocratic movements abroad
(Wikipedia)
Bleeding Kansas
What was it: Violence that erupted between proslavery and antislavery men (1854)
Cause: The conflict over whether Kansas would enter the US as a free or slave state due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which nullified the Missouri Compromise and implemented the concept of popular sovereignty
(Barrons 141)
Pottawatomie Massacre and John Brown
What as it: When antislavery activist John Brown initiated a bloody massacre of proslavery men along the banks of Pottawatomie Creek
Result: Exemplified the harsh and relenting feelings between proslavery and antislavery activists
(Barrons 141)
Brooks-Sumner Fight
Cause: Growing tensions between the North and the South (1856)
What was it: Senator Charles Sumner gave an antislavery speech in which he signaled out Senator Andrew P. Butler.
Result: When Butler’s nephew Brooks heard about it he beat Sumner repeatedly. Northerners saw the beating as a further sign of Southern barbarity while Southerners made Brooks a hero
(Barrons 141)
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Introduced by: Senator Stephen Douglas
What did it do: Called for dividing the northern section of the Louisiana Purchase into two separate territories, Kansas and Nebraska and allowed for slavery in both territories.
Significance: Mandated that the question of slavery was to be decided by popular sovereignty and repealed thw Missouri Compromise which stated that Kansas and Nebraska were to be closed to slavery.
Result: Northerners angry at act and Douglas and spurred the birth of the Republican Party as the northern Democrats were divided
(Barrons 140)
Transcontinental Railroad
Problem: Where to place it. The Northerners wanted to locate the railroad’s eastern terminus in Chicago, the rapidly growing capital of the Nirthwest while Southerners supported St. Louis, Memphis, or New Orleans, all located in slave states.
Significance: Continued struggle between the North and the South
(Brinkley 360)
Gadsden Purchase
What was it: In 1853 Jamesw Gadsden, a southern railroad builder, pursaded the Mexican government to accept $10 million in exchange for a strip of land in present-day Arizona and New Mexico
Significance: Facilitated a southern route for the transcontinental railroad and accentuated the sectional rivalry
(Brinkley 360)
Election of 1856
What was it: an unusually heated contest that led to the election of Democrat James Buchanan
Significance: The Whig Party, which had been one of the two major parties in the U.S., had disintegrated since the 1852 election over the issue of slavery, and new parties such as the Republican Party and American Party, or “Know Nothing Party,” competed to replace it as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party.
Result: It was clear that a new two-party system was emerging, the Democrats and the Republicans
(Wikipedia and Barrons 140)
Commodore Perry and Japan
1852-1854
