K's

Question 1

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Answer 1

a law, first introduced as a bill in Congress in 1854 by Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, whose purpose was to organize the area west of Missouri and Iowa as the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and facilitate the building of transcontinental railroad on a central route, something that would benefit him and his Illinois constituents; under pressure from Southern senators, Douglas was compelled to include in the bill an explicit repeal of the Missouri Compromise (which banned slavery in the areas in question) and a provision that the status of slavery in the newly organized territories be decided by popular sovereignty; the act aroused a storm of outrage in the North, where the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was seen as the breaking of a solemn agreement

Question 2

Kentucky

Answer 2

Admitted as a state in the Union in 1792

Question 3

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (aka Resolves)

Answer 3

proposals to empower the state bodies to nullify federal laws within those states, which were drawn up by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison - who believed that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional - and then passed only by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures

Question 4

King George’s War

Answer 4

called the “War of Jenkin’s Ear” in Europe and later the “War of the Austrian Succession,” a conflict in 1739 between Britain, along with American troops, and France and Spain

Question 5

King Philip

Answer 5

(Metacomet) a Wampanoag chief who led a war in 1675 to exterminate the whites in New England

Question 6

Kitchen Cabinet

Answer 6

a group of partisan supporters who - instead of the appointed cabinet members - had the ear and the confidence of President Andrew Jackson

Question 7

Know-Nothing Party

Answer 7

so-called because its members were told to answer “I know nothing” when asked about its secret proceedings; the party was anti-foreign and, since many of the foreigners were Catholic, also anti-Catholic; it surged briefly to become the country’s second-largest party by 1855, but faded even more quickly because of the ineptness of its leaders and its failure to address the growing urgency of the slavery question

Question 8

Ku Klux Klan

Answer 8

a group of Southerners who used violence to intimidate blacks and white Republicans out of voting for Reconstruction governments